I love Ralph Vaughan-William's lush and romantic orchestrations and melodic lines. His "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" is one of my favourite pieces of all time, in any genre (but i struggled to come up with a concept to illustrate it!). Arguably even more well known is his short composition "The Lark Ascending", that celebrates its 90th anniversary this year. The inspiration was a poem of the same name by George Meredith; a few lines excerpted to give you a flavour: "He rises and begins to round, He drops the silver chain of sound... ...For singing till his heaven fills, 'Tis love of earth that he instils, And ever winging up and up, Our valley is his golden cup And he the wine which overflows to lift us with him as he goes. Till lost on his aerial rings In light, and then the fancy sings". Anyone who has had the pleasure af wandering in a summer heath with skylarks singing high in the sky will hear what a lovely evocation Vaughan-Williams has achieved. His wife put it succinctly when she said of the piece that he had "made the violin become both the bird's song and its flight".