The contemplative nature of much of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s work is said to stem from his love of poetry. After his teacher introduced him to the visionary work of Walt Whitman, the collection Leaves of Grass became the composer’s ‘constant companion’ and the inspiration for Toward the Unknown Region, a song for choir and orchestra first performed in Leeds in 1907. One critic at the time hailed Williams as the leading British composer of the new generation.

Futurist poetry, meanwhile, would suit the character of Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto. This work reveals the complex nature of the instrument, which, according to the composer, ‘can be at the same time warm-hearted and completely hysterical, as mild as balsam, and screaming like a tram-car on poorly-greased rails’. Having befriended the members of the Copenhagen Brass Quintet, he wished to compose a musical portrait for each of them, in the form of a solo concerto.

Perhaps it was the broad phrases of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s symphonic writing that led observers to associate many of his works with the landscapes of the countries he visited. His Symphony No. 3 in A minor, for example, supposedly evokes the dense fog-shrouded mountain landscapes of Scotland, which the composer visited in 1829. Yet the composer himself did not refer to such inspirations after completing the long journey of several years to completing this work, which received its Scottish nickname from well-meaning listeners.