It’s that time of year again and so the day has come for the launch of this year’s BBC Proms – always an exciting day for the Proms team, when we finally get to talk publicly about the plans that have been built over the last three years.

It’s also a relief that, despite rumours and second guessings on websites and message boards, the whole season manages to remain under wraps until the embargo time is reached today.

Though this year marks our 120th season, the vision of the festival has remained the same since its inception – to bring the best classical music to the largest possible audience. The Proms has always sought to build new audiences. One of the key areas of our work in this area is our ticket prices, not least our Promming (standing) tickets, which this year are held at £5 for the ninth year running. Without the support of the BBC licence-fee payers, this extraordinary value for money would not be possible.

The audience for the Proms is now genuinely international and it is the global classical music world that we celebrate in welcoming many international orchestras to the Proms (and indeed to the UK) for the first time this summer. I am delighted that, alongside our more regular orchestral visitors from across Europe and the USA, we are able to welcome ensembles from Australia, China, Greece, Iceland, Lapland, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore and Turkey.

Almost half of the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall are given by our BBC orchestras and I cannot remember a time when such flourishing and exciting partnerships have existed in these groups. Without these orchestras, the BBC Singers and the two BBC choruses, planning the Proms on this scale would not be possible, or as creative and distinctive. It would also be impossible to keep exploring new ideas and fresh programming without the dedication and sheer hard work of the Proms team.

In addition to the feast of music from abroad, we have in recent years celebrated British music. We continue that momentum this year, not least by honouring two fine living composers both celebrating their 80th birthdays this year. The music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is featured this summer as is that by Walton, another knighted Lancastrian!

We also mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Richard Strauss as we present three of Strauss’s operatic masterpieces: Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier and Salome. There is also the staging of a non-operatic work when Sir Simon Rattle, star soloists and the Berlin Philharmonic present Peter Sellars’ realisation of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.

Bach’s other great Passion setting, the St John, is conducted by Sir Roger Norrington, one of our British conductors celebrating significant birthdays this year. Sir Roger (80 this year) will, like Sir Andrew Davis (70), Donald Runnicles (60) and Edward Gardner (40), conduct two Proms and it is a thrill to welcome back Sir Neville Marriner in his 90th-birthday year, with the orchestra he founded, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, alongside its new Music Director, Joshua Bell.

Sakari Oramo, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, will be in charge of the Last Night for the first time, and there are two Proms each conducted by Jirí Behlolávek, Semyon Bychkov, Riccardo Chailly and Valery Gergiev.

Among the concerts honouring the World War One anniversary is the War Horse Prom, in which the extraordinary puppets from the National Theatre’s acclaimed production make an appearance alongside the Proms debut of Gareth Malone and the Proms Military Wives Choir.

There are more debuts too. Look out for the first ever CBeebies and BBC Sport Proms, and first appearances at the Proms by Paloma Faith, the Pet Shop Boys and Rufus Wainwright, as well as other special Late Night Proms including Laura Mvula making her first solo appearance.

All this and much more, including the wide-ranging and attractive Proms Chamber Music and Proms Saturday Matinee series at Cadogan Hall; an array of commissions and premieres, including two of the last works by the late Sir John Tavener; and soloists such as Janine Jansen and Roderick Williams on the Last Night.

As ever, all the Proms are broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and there will be additional broadcasts on Radio 1, Radio 2 and for the first time on both Radio 4, with a commission for its PM programme, and Radio 5 live in its 20th anniversary year. There is a remarkable commitment from our TV colleagues to bring the Proms to an ever expanding audience across BBCs One, Two and Four and for the first time CBeebies will broadcast a special prom. We’re also delighted to welcome presenters from the worlds of music and arts, many of whom have not presented Proms before and will join our established presenters to bring these Proms to our television audiences. There is also a significant development in our digital Proms offer with new initiatives such as a dedicated Proms button on the BBC iPlayer Radio app, six interactive BBC iWonder guides, and the addition of BBC Playlister.

So, wherever you are and however you choose to listen, watch and interact, I hope you enjoy the 2014 BBC Proms.

• Visit the About the BBC blog to go behind the scenes of the 2014 Launch
• Explore full details of the season on the BBC Proms website
• Watch the 2014 Season Launch video

The performers of Ligeti's Poème Symphonique, relaxing in the Royal Albert Hall Green Room before their performance.

I've recently been working with Matthew on the relaunch of a new Radiophonic Workshop and we've been working with The Space on a number of other related projects. For the live remix of Prom 44 Matthew had a clear vision of what he wanted, and he invited some of the members of the new Radiophonic Workshop, along with some people for the London Sinfonietta to help create the composition. There were 12 volunteers in total, we were each issued with a clipboard and pencil, and were asked to bring along a smart phone - it was the first time I've be told to make sure my phone was fully charged before attending a classical concert!

The piece, Small, Smaller, Smallest, is a comment on the way we all consume music today, using small handheld devices often with very iffy sound quality. Also how the ripping, file sharing and free download culture has changed the relationship between the audience, the performers and the composer. Finally how the mobile phone has changed the culture of concert going (with the danger of random ring-tones going off in concerts), and the change in mind-set we have when we attend concerts (we choose to stay in touch and share our experiences by social media, even as we listen or watch). The piece also democratises the composition process, inviting not only the 12 volenteers, but the whole audience to contribute.

The clipboard was used to make a note of the recorded sections and are effectively a score of the composition.

The live re-mix would consist of recordings of the evening's performances made by 12 volunteers each using a mobile phone to make one short recording from the build up to the evening, and one recording from each of the 6 performances. The 12 volunteers would be situated in different places in and around the audience. The audience at the Royal Albert Hall would also be asked to contribute to the piece by sending themselves a SMS text message when cued by André Ridder, the conductor, therefore creating a ripple of around 800 SMS alert sounds to accompany the smartphone recordings. The original plan was for the 12 volunteers to play their 7 recordings from where they were located in the audience, but some testing revealed that Radio 3's microphones wouldn't pick up the mobile phones, so each volunteer made their way to the stage after Cage's 4'33 and was given a microphone.

After spending a geeky few minutes comparing field recording apps we set off to mingle with the audience and start our recordings. My choices for the 7 clips ranged from the backstage 3-minute warning to the Sinfonietta tuning up before a performance of Louis Andriessen's De Snelheid. Not to mention a 10 second clip of John Cage's 4'33. The performance of Small, Smaller, Smallest on stage worked well; the structure of the concert clearly audible in our performance and, though it was hard to hear how it sounded from the stage, feedback from both the live audience, and people listening on Radio 3 was very positive.

View from the stage of the Royal Albert Hall

My experiments with sound tend to address more technical questions, but I very much enjoyed the sonic exploration of the live remix of Prom 44. The whole of Prom 44 is available to hear on iPlayer for a limited time.

Anthony Churnside is a technologist in the R&D audio team based at Salford