Sir Simon Rattle to conduct the Bavarian Radio Symphony orchestra at the Proms [Mark Allan]

SOME conductors build careers the steady way, by forging long and deep relationships with orchestras. But others speed-date and collect their orchestras like postage stamps. And this week at the Proms you’ll find conspicuous examples of both methods.

Representing the long/deep school is Simon Rattle who spent 18 years with the City of Birmingham Symphony before moving onwards and upwards to the Berlin Philharmonic for a similar duration. He’s now chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony; and he brings them to the Albert Hall for two nights, 5 & 6 Sep, with music by Bruckner, Mahler and the UK premiere of a new piece by Thomas Ades.

As for speed-daters, there’s no one at the moment like Klaus Makela, the dynamic young Finn who, at 28, is at the same time running the Oslo Philharmonic and Orchestre de Paris, and about to take charge of the Concertgebouw and Chicago Symphony. How he does it beggars belief, though what people under 30 call “rizz” has something to do with it. You can form your own view when he brings his Paris band to the Proms, Sep 3, to play Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

• Among the other heavy-hitters at the Proms is the Berlin Philharmonic itself: the Rolls Royce of international orchestras, in purring form under conductor Kirill Petrenko and here for two nights, Aug 31 (with Schumann’s Piano Concerto, soloist Vikingur Olafsson) and Sep 1 (Bruckner’s 5th Symphony). To hear this band is to be awe-struck by a sheer luxuriance of sound that no British orchestra, however good, delivers. Make the most of it. And if you can spare the whole day on Aug 31, there’s an afternoon Prom featuring just three players – which might sound underwhelming in the vastness of the Albert Hall, but consider who the players are. They’re cellist YoYo Ma, pianist Emanuel Ax, and violinist Leonidas Kavakos: megastars all, playing Beethoven, and likely to be doing it with enough power to reach the rafters. Details of all Proms at bbc.co.uk/proms. And remember, they all get broadcast live on Radio 3.

• Beyond the Proms, the Royal Opera’s David McVicar production of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro is back September 2-15 – and if you want details, take note that the web address has changed to reflect the fact that what used to be called the Royal Opera House is now Royal Ballet & Opera. Hence rbo.org.uk

• Meanwhile, a new series of seriously classy concerts begins at JW3, the Jewish cultural centre on Finchley Rd that’s setting itself up as North London’s answer to the Wigmore Hall. Curated by ex-cellist of the Endellion Quartet, David Waterman, they start Sep 5 with a recital by star pianist Steven Osborne, heard only the other week at the Proms. He plays Debussy, Schumann, Schubert. More of this to come. Book: jw3.org.uk/classical

• More modestly, the Grimeborn Festival continues at the Arcola Theatre, Dalston, with a mini-opera, Verlaine en Prison, of local interest to Camden residents. It was in 1873 that the French poet Verlaine came to live in Royal College St with his young lover Arthur Rimbaud – where they quarrelled, violently if comically, involving an assault with a dead fish that history records as a herring. Not long afterwards Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the wrist, and went to prison for it – which becomes the subject for this opera, running Sep 4 – 7. If marine life features, it’s not credited among the cast.