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The Places

The tour starts in Uzbekistan, of which there are later glimpses. There is a visit to the historic Russian town of Suzdal and scenes from St Petersburg as well as from Ukraine. It would be impossible to avoid the Russian winter, which appears in various guises, providing entertainment for some and for others a seemingly enchanted snow-bound landscape.

The Music

The music for the tour is taken from Russian composers who were, by and large, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of their country. This is reflected in Lyadov’s arrangement of a series folk-songs and his translation of Russian legend into music. Other composers represented are Ippolitov-Ivanov, Kabalevsky and Anton Rubinstein, with two well known excerpts from unfinished operas by Mussorgsky.

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The Places

The journey starts in Switzerland, in the canton of Thurgau, leading from Steckborn and the Bodensee to the Rhine Falls. From Styria, in Austria, comes Hochosterwitz Castle and from Bavaria Weikersheim Castle, the latter intercut with wild life from the Austrian Assling Nature Park. The tour ends amid the strangely shaped mountains of the Dolomites in Southern Tyrol, a region divided between Austria and Italy.

The Music

In a remarkable way Mahler, in his symphonies and songs, has seemed to reflect the world of today in all its bewildering variety and has now won an established place in concert repertoire. Distinguished as a conductor, his fame as a composer has grown over the years since his death. The music included here is Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, nick-named Titan, not for its massive power, but after the book by Jean Paul, a strong influence over earlier romantics and over Mahler at this stage in his career. The symphony breathes the spirit of the Austrian countryside, reflected in Mahler’s songs.

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The Places

Scenes of Finland and its capital Helsinki, the interlinked islands of Savonlinna, site of an ancient castle and Kerimäki, with its wooden church, suggest a vision of a remarkable country, moulded by its geographical features and its varied and long history.

The Music

Finland found its musical identity largely through the work of Jean Sibelius. The son of a doctor, Sibelius belonged to a class of which the culture and language was Swedish. He learned Finnish and acquired his knowledge of Finnish literature and legend at school, developed his understanding of music in Germany, principally in Berlin, and established himself as one of the most considerable of the late Romantic symphonists, exploring new possibilities in a vein that might have seemed overworked. Here and in his tone-poems, based largely on Finnish legend, he created a national music that has defied imitation in the very breadth of his conception of the symphonic form.

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The Places

The tour of France takes us to Burgundy, to the Pays de la Loire, to Franche-Comté and elsewhere and includes glimpses of the 17th century Château de Cheverny, with its hunting museum and souvenirs of the chase, and the Château d’Arlay, with its site for falconry. The Château de Bussy-Rabutain was rebuilt in the middle of the 17th century by Count Roger of Bussy-Rabutain, exiled from the French court after his scandalous Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, a literary preoccupation reflected in his collection of pictures. The restored gardens of the Château de Villandry are seen in their formal lay-out.

The Music

The music chosen to accompany the tour of the fertile and varied landscapes of France is by Beethoven and consists principally of his Pastoral Symphony, a work that reflects his feelings, as he recollects a visit to the countryside. The symphony includes elements of realism in its versions of bird-calls and its depiction of a storm, followed by a song of the thanksgiving, when the storm has passed. Also included is the Romance in G, a single movement for solo violin and orchestra, possibly intended for a violin concerto that was never written.

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The Places

The Canton of Ticino (German Tessin) is the only Swiss canton to have Italian as its official

language. It is bounded on three sides by Italy and boasts spectacular mountain scenery, with waterfalls, rivers and lakes. The capital of the canton is now Bellinzona, but was earlier shared with Locarno and Lugano. A feature of the landscape lies in the great lakes that are within its territory, including part of Lago Maggiore, into which the Ticino and Maggia flow.

The Music

Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony, studied in Leipzig, lived in Dresden and, in 1850 moved to Düsseldorf as director of music to the city. He died in 1856, after a severe mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. In 1840, in spite of the objections of her father, he had married the young pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher. It was particularly after his marriage that he turned his attention to larger scale compositions, of which his Piano Concerto is an example, inspired by his wife. The other work heard here, the Intermezzi, Op. 4, dates from an earlier period, devoted in particular to the composition of shorter piano pieces, when a career as a pianist still seemed possible for him.

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The Places

The scenes shown all breathe an air of peace and tranquillity. Starting with an evening landscape in Bohemia, we move to a lake in the Tyrol, to the Museo Vela, with its gesso figures, Bavarian craftsmen fashioning glass and the Corniche near Cannes, in the South of France. Other scenes include the ancient Chapel of St Sixtus at Eygalières, the Church of St Jakob at Tramin, night in Madrid, and a nocturnal view of Seville, the whole culminating in the great Basilica of St Mark in Venice.

The Music

The music chosen, like the scenes it accompanies, suggest the calm of night. There are movements from Handel and Telemann, from concertos by Mozart for horn and for flute, and a Chopin Prelude. There is a Spanish element in the music of two French composers, Bizet and Massenet, and an air of nostalgia evoked in Fauré’s Pavane.

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Music by Johann Strauss II

Music by JS Bach