Today’s pro­gramme takes us back to the the 18th and the begin­ning of the 19th cen­turies, with music from the time of nov­el­ist Jane Austen (1775–1817) and the painter (Thomas) Gains­bor­ough (1728–1788) — in oth­er words, music that takes us from the late Baroque to the ear­ly Clas­si­cal period.

How­ev­er, we have tried to keep away from some of the more obvi­ous choic­es from this peri­od: there’s lit­tle J S Bach in the pro­gramme today for exam­ple, although there are some pieces from Johann Chris­t­ian Bach, his youngest son; and we’ve omit­ted the more obvi­ous works of Han­del. There are works by Pur­cell, includ­ing the orig­i­nal piece that formed the inspi­ra­tion for Brit­ten’s Young Per­son­’s Guide to the Orches­tra, the Ron­deau from Abde­lazar; songs and con­cer­ti by Boyce and Arne; and some com­posers you may not have heard of, such as the younger and elder Lin­leys, Dib­din, and the Earl of Abing­don, the works of whom were includ­ed in Jane Austen’s per­son­al music col­lec­tion, and in some cas­es were friends, acquain­tances and sub­jects of Gains­bor­ough’s paintings.