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The music here included is all closely associated with Vienna,where Mozart spent the last ten years of his life, where Schubert was born in 1797, and where Beethoven, from 1792 until his death in 1827, was a dominant musical figure.

The music included here is associated in one way or another with Prague or Bohemia. It includes works by the Bohemian composers Smetana and Dvorák, by the Moravian composer Janácek, and by Fibich who, with Mozart, always found a ready welcome for his music in Prague.

The music here included is all associated in one way or another with Rome and its traditions. It ranges from the overture to Mozart’s Roman opera La clemenza di Tito to Wagner’s Tannhäuser, whose hero seeks pardon for his sins in the Eternal City, from Puccini’s opera Tosca, set in Rome dominated by a corrupt chief of police, to Berlioz’s evocation of the city in the age of Benvenuto Cellini, his Roman Carnival Overture.

The music here included is either associated directly with Venice or familiar there in the heyday of the Serenissima. It includes music by the Venetian composers Vivaldi and Marcello, and by Domenico Scarlatti, Neapolitan by birth, who was sent to study there by his father.

The music here included is largely associated with Paris, although not all by French composers. It includes a movement from a symphony that Mozart wrote in Paris in 1778 and excerpts from Verdi’s opera La Traviata, set principally in the city. Other music ranges from that of the seventeenth-century French viol-player Marais to works by Debussy and the eccentric Erik Satie.

The music here included ranges from folk-song and extracts from the Russian Orthodox liturgy to works by Russian nationalist composers of the later nineteenth century, including Balakirev, Arensky and the more cosmopolitan Tchaikovsky.

The music of Spain held an exotic attraction for composers from other lands. The Russians Glinka and Rimsky Korsakov found inspiration here, as did the French composers Lalo, Massenet and Ravel, who claimed Basque descent on his mother's side, and Bizet, whose opera Carmen is imbued with the spirit of the country. Spain provided Verdi with a narrative source, and another Italian, the demon violinist Paganini, was equally a master of the quintessential Spanish instrument, the guitar.

Spanish composers are represented here by Granados and Albéniz, whose successful careers extended into the 20th century. Music by other composers reflects various connections with Spain. Seville is the setting for Mozart's operas The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, and for Rossini's Figaro opera, The Barber of Seville. Bizet's Carmen is centred on Seville, while Verdi's tragic opera The Force of Destiny, set in Spain and based on a Spanish play, ranges over a wider area.

The composers whose music is here included, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui, Liadov and Ippolitov Ivanov, were themselves closely associated with Russian music of the later nineteenth century and, inevitably, with St Petersburg and its Conservatory.