Jamie Barton [Stacey Bode]

AMERICAN mezzo Jamie Barton isn’t the shy, retiring type. Collectors of memorable Proms experiences may recall her star turn at the 2019 Last Night when she came on dressed in the colours of LGBT celebration and brandished a rainbow flag as she sang Rule Britannia.

What she’ll brandish on Aug 23 when she returns to the Albert Hall for a Prom performance of Mahler’s orchestral song-cycle Das Lied von der Erde, is anyone’s guess. But I predict a sweeping, sassily sensational performance of a piece that comes with no holds barred.

Ecstatic, wild and heartfelt, it sets paraphrases of Chinese poetry that declare the wonder of existence at the same time as they look death in the face. And it’s more or less a symphony that, had he given it a number, would have been Mahler’s 9th. But he knew that for many composers nine symphonies marked the end of the journey. So, being superstitious, he avoided the S-word.

Either way, it’s music on a scale to blow your socks into the afterlife. Barton has a voice and personality of fabulous dimension. And with fellow-soloist Clay Hilley and the BBC Philharmonic, this will rank among the big-hitting Proms of the season.

• Mahler fans will be pleased to know there’s more of him at the Proms this week when the Orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, New York make a rare trip across the pond with Music Director Yannick Nezet-Seguin. They’re here for two nights, with an all-Strauss programme, Aug 26, that includes the final scene of his salacious opera Salome. But next night, Aug 27, it’s Mahler: his transcendently beautiful Ruckert-Lieder alongside the 4th Symphony – for which the Met players are joined by another American mezzo of formidable presence, Joyce DiDonato, who should guarantee some transcendence of her own.

• As if that wasn’t enough cultural traffic from America, Marin Alsop flies over Aug 24 to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra in a pop programme of Gershwin, Copland and Bernstein – prefaced with a little piece by US composer Joan Tower mischievously called Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. Should you wonder who the Woman is, it’s Alsop herself: the score’s pioneering dedicatee.

• American links are also active on Aug 23 when the Academy of St Martin in the Fields premiere a new concerto for an instrument that doesn’t often get that kind of spotlit treatment: the bassoon. It’s written by the happily still active 98-year-old Thea Musgrave who was born in Scotland but has lived in the US for decades. And it’s played by star bassoonist (you don’t get many of those) Amy Harman, who will amplify her performance by moving around the stage with some element of choreography as specified in the score. Something to watch as well as hear.

• One further Stars & Stripes event comes Aug 23 when the BBCSO play one of the great, iconoclastic orchestral scores of the early 20th Century: Ameriques by Edgard Varese. A machine-age fantasy, Ameriques takes the street noise of New York and turns it into music, complete with wailing sirens, foghorns, and a battery of percussion – battery being the only way to describe it, although the result is as exhilarating as it’s deafening.

All Proms plays at the Royal Albert Hall, and are broadcast live on Radio 3. bbc.co.uk/proms