The dynamic young players of the Odyssey Festival Orchestra embark on a musical journey exploring three great composers’ responses to the natural world around them.

Beethoven celebrated the countryside in his ground-breaking ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, written just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning to threaten a rural way of life that had existed for centuries.

By the time Wagner wrote his epic ‘Ring’ cycle 150 years ago, it was already clear that there had been terrible consequences to the natural order from this industrial exploitation. A plea to respect the natural environment lies at the heart of this 20-hour drama, which includes a reflection on the beauties of the forest in the third music drama, Siegfried.

Leoš Janáček, writing in the 1920s, saw a more complex interaction between Mankind and Nature. His vision was an optimistic one of hope, renewal and regeneration, expressed in his opera The Cunning Little Vixen.

The concert includes readings from the three composers and poems by the English peasant poet, John Clare.