Born in London on August 15, 1875, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was raised by his English mother after his father, a physician from Sierra Leone, West Africa, returned to his native country when his practice failed. He showed musical aptitude from his earliest years, giving his first public violin recital at eight and becoming a choirboy in Croydon. At the encouragement of his choirmaster, Coleridge-Taylor entered the Royal College of Music in 1890, where his classmates included Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Though he initially planned to study the violin, he published his first significant work—a setting of the Te Deum—the very same year, launching his career in composition. After graduating from the Royal College of Music in 1897, Coleridge-Taylor received his first commission in 1898 at the recommendation of Sir Edward Elgar, who deemed the young composer “far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the young men.” Stanford led the first part of Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha Trilogy two months later at the Royal College of Music. For the 1901 festival, Coleridge-Taylor reworked the second movement of his 1896 Symphony in A Minor, adding parts for tuba and harp and changing details of the melody, harmony, and orchestration. While the resulting work, Idyll, did not enjoy the fame of the Hiawatha Trilogy, its reception was generally positive. As a critic in the Musical Times wrote, “Mr. S. Coleridge-Taylor’s Idyll is a very beautiful, one-themed little work, exquisitely orchestrated, perhaps monotonous in color, but with a lovely reposeful intention.”

Many of English composer Gustav Holst’s favorite things intersect in the Brook Green Suite. Holst wrote the suite in 1933 while he was in the hospital, one year before his death, for his orchestral students at the St. Paul Girls’ School. Education was essential to Holst, and he wanted the young musicians to have substantive musical experiences that matched their skill level. The result was the Brook Green Suite, named either for the school’s proximity to the neighborhood of Brook Green in London or perhaps because he and his wife Isobel were married there in 1901. All three movements—a gentle Prelude, a lyrical Air, and an energetic Dance—are infused with the rich lyricism of English folk music, another of Holst’s passions. The Brook Green Suite was later adapted for winds, increasing its accessibility and broad appeal.

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi is renowned today for his skill with orchestration and instrumental color. He was an equally skilled early music scholar, editing the works of Claudio Monteverdi and Vitali and producing idiomatic transcriptions and arrangements of music by Renaissance and Baroque composers. His three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, based on early 17th-century Italian and French lute music, reflect this research prowess. Unlike Stravinsky, Respighi leaves the original harmonies intact, using orchestral color and tempo changes to give the old melodies a modern sound. The Suite No. 3, written in 1931, is written for strings alone. The opening Italiana is based on an anonymous 17th-century popular tune, while the source of the pastoral Siciliana is also unknown.

While Vivaldi penned hundreds of concertos, he is most famous for the set of four grouped under the title Le quattro stagioni , or The Four Seasons. The work was popular in Europe throughout Vivaldi’s lifetime; as one critic wrote in 1740, “Who does not know the Four Seasons of Antonio Vivaldi?” Ironically, modern audiences didn’t—until the collection was revived during the 1960s. The Four Seasons presents a fascinating tension between the standard musical structure composers used during the Baroque era and Vivaldi’s creative instincts. All four concertos fulfill the basic requirements of the genre: they consist of three movements (fast—slow—fast) with ritornello (returning or repeating) sections for the orchestra and flashy solo passages. Sonnets published with each concerto drive the musical content, however. While it is unknown whether Vivaldi wrote the sonnets before or after the music, each poem has a three-part structure that corresponds nicely with the fast-slow-fast concerto form.

In the second concerto, L’estate (Summer), the opening Allegro con moto (Energetic, with motion) begins amidst oppressive heat. A few birds manage to sing cautiously despite the blazing sun, yet their halting calls fill the shepherd with dread. The second movement, Adagio e piano—Presto e forte (Slow and soft—Fast and loud), depicts the shepherd’s growing awareness that a violent storm is approaching. The storm arrives in the concluding Presto, with thunder, lightning, and violent hailstorms that flatten the ripened corn.