In a way, he was a second Bernstein.

Couperin: Les Nations Réunies & autres sonades La Simphonie du Marais/Hugo Reyne (Musiques à la Chabotterie)

Beethoven: Symphony No 3, Strauss: Horn Concerto No 1 Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck, William Caballero (horn) (Reference Recordings)

With eyes swivelled towards who'll take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as the Philharmonia's Principal Conductor in 2021, two of the strongest possibilities are to be found within the orchestra's masthead of associates.

There’s always a special atmosphere when the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra returns to Birmingham Town Hall, and it’s not just because of the building’s Greek Revival beauty: the gilded sunburst on the ceiling, or the towering, intricately painted mass of the organ, topped with its cameo of Queen Victoria.

A shrewd orchestra maintains a strong subs bench. One of the major discoveries in Birmingham during the interregnum between Andris Nelsons’s premature departure and the appointment of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was the young Israeli conductor Omer Meir Wellber, whose taut, ferociously intelligent 2015 account of Brahms’s First Symphony prompted mutterings both inside and outside the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra that he might be The One, or at least capable of running The One very close indeed.

Discreetly poking his camera through one of the red curtains around the Albert Hall, chief Proms photographer Chris Christodoulou gets the action shots others would kill for.

Beguiling echoes, patterns and symmetries accompanied the Hallé on this Proms journey through the enchanted forests of orchestral sound.

"When the new god approaches, we surrender, struck dumb". Especially if, for the singer of those words, popular entertainer Zerbinetta, the “new god” takes the shape of same-sex love.

The First Night of the Proms is always a tricky one to programme, bringing together themes of the season, perhaps a new work and, most importantly, a grand finale. This year’s Prom No. 1 ticked all the boxes, and without feeling like pick-n-mix.