Prom 34 opens with a sweeping excerpt of the score to Postcard from Earth (2023), which sets the tone for our voyage through 21st-century soundscapes: performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra, expertly conducted by Robert Ames, and stylishly presented by award-winning broadcaster Edith Bowman. Many of these compositions have never been performed live, making it a rare privilege to witness these simultaneously lush and jarring soundscapes. For every cadence that stirs, there is one that fractures and chills. The orchestra is flawless, energetically conducted by Ames, and the result is a rip-roaring journey through time, space and the multiverse.

Bowman’s compering beautifully informs each score. For example, while the clamorous, earth-shattering brass in All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) is intended to evoke the main character’s “feeling in his stomach when he’s in the trenches”; the score for Poor Things (2023) should feel like “extremely close, unbroken eye contact”. As composer and broadcaster Jessica Curry writes so aptly in the programme: “Soundtracks no longer reassure and accompany, they challenge and alienate,” and it certainly feels this way. These pieces selected for Prom 34 grip you by the throat, and don’t let go.

The variation in sounds over the course of the evening is astounding. Ames worked with a range of expert arrangers, and was in talks with the composers, to find equivalents for the found-sounds of the film scores. The results are incredible: from recorder and castanets to illustrate the distorted children’s games of Squid Game (2021); to the discordant harp illustrating the “post-modern Frankenstein” of Poor Things; to percussive beats sounding like knives and forks banging against plates for eerie horror-comedy The Menu (2022). At one point, an enraptured audience realises they are witnessing a percussionist playing the ominously clacking spokes of a bicycle wheel.

The full spectrum of human emotion is on display as we careen from the horror of Knock at the Cabin (2023) to the whimsy of children’s animation The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse (2022). A personal highlight was the heartbreaking rendition of “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks (2004) by Max Richter, which has been used in Shutter Island (2010), Arrival (2016) and The Last of Us (2023). The rousing evening playfully culminates with the score for Poor Things, and a single note played on the harp, which leaves the audience laughing in delight. A celebration of film music as an astounding, seamless vehicle for storytelling — while you can feel the mood of each film through the score; without the scores, the films could not stand alone.

Tickets for all 73 Proms are available from just £8 on the BBC Proms 2024 website.