Nature and Literature have always been great sources of inspiration for composers. The genius of each of them, together with the intentions that motivated them in each case, have led composers to create very diverse and beautiful pieces, such as the ones in this season ticket programme.

Although by the same composer, music inspired by angry wasps that according to Aristophanes "carry below their loins the sharpest of stings, with which to prick their foes; they shout and leap and their stings burn like so many sparks”, cannot be more different from music inspired by the lark that "... rises and begins to round,/ he drops the silver chain of sound,/ of many links without a break,/ in chirrup, whistle, slur and shake...”, as imagined by English poet George Meredith. Perhaps it is also relevant that The Wasps was composed for a university performance of Aristophanes’ play in 1909, and that The Lark Ascending appeared after an in-depth revision of a man who had lived the First World War from up close. Ralph Vaughan Williams, the author of both of these works, is an interesting composer admired by fellow Britons but relatively unknown to the rest of us, not having taken the opportunity to find out more about him on the fiftieth (now fifty first) anniversary of his death.

Also different, though relatively close in time, are the piece subtitled "A Grand Zoological Fantasy", a menagerie of different animals conceived as a musical joke –its architect, CamilleSaint-Saëns was not too sure of the sense of humour of some of his colleagues, and did not allow its full première until after his death–, and the ‘symphonic fantasia’ composed by an author as temperamental as Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, impressed by the tragic tale of Francesca da Rimini’s experience of the inferno as told by Dante.

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