“Mindful Mix” is one of the most popular weekly programmes on BBC Radio 3, offering listeners a carefully curated, uninterrupted two hours of soothing classical music. But the selected tracks are always DJed from studio albums… until now. For this week’s “Mindful Mix”, it’s live, starring VOCES8, Carducci String Quartet, and Ola Gjeilo on piano, with hypnotic, ever-changing lighting design (Dave Bishop), all lusciously mixed to include sounds of nature (Steve Hughes, Griff Hewis).

Apart from a couple of pieces, it’s basically a VOCES8 concert. Probably the most acclaimed mixed vocal ensemble in the UK today, they sing everything from William Byrd to Radiohead in the most breathtakingly pure, controlled tone, and inimitable blend. It is in fact an exquisite 2019 arrangement of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” by Geoff Lawson (a long-time collaborator with VOCES8) that steals the show, featuring Ruby Aspinall (Chineke! Orchestra) on harp in the echoing lower register.

The BBC Proms has commissioned acclaimed, Polish-British composer Roxanna Panufnik specifically for this Prom. Her “Floral Tribute” (2023) to the late Queen Elizabeth II (based on the poem by Simon Armitage) offers a thematic counterpoint to William Byrd’s “Diliges Dominum”, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I. Panufnik’s tribute, with repeated calls of “Elizabeth”, employs strange, disconcerting harmony that captures flowers heaping at the gates of Buckingham Palace.

Throughout, Ola Gjeilo improvises short, pillow-soft piano pieces, so we don’t clap until right at the end. When we finally do, the enormous ovation from a third-full auditorium finally jolts us out of our reverie.

Tickets for all 71 Proms are available from just £8 on the BBC Proms 2023 website.