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On the eve of World War I, Ralph Vaughan Williams began writing a piece for violin and orchestra inspired by George Meredith’s 1881 poem, The Lark Ascending. (At one point, the story goes, the composer looked so suspicious jotting down ideas in his notebook that he was mistaken for a German spy.) First performed in 1921, the pastoral piece opens with soft chords in the orchestra. The violin then takes flight in a free-form, spiraling cadenza. Atmospheric, folk-like melodies emerge, explored by soloist and ensemble. At the close, another cadenza exquisitely matches Meredith’s imagery of a lark “ever winging up and up to lift us with him as he goes.”

Johann Strauss II earned the nickname “The Waltz King” for both the quantity and quality of his many ventures in 3/4 time, not to mention polkas and other super-tuneful dance pieces (around 500 in all). He risked his regal reputation only when he started writing operettas. Out of nearly 20, just one became a repertoire standard: Die Fledermaus (The Bat). The brightly orchestrated Overture is the perfect prelude to this 1874 operetta’s champagne-fueled comic antics. Highlights fly by, including the sound of a clock striking six (it figures in the plot); a delicious number contrasting a sweetly yearning melody with an accelerating two-step; and a vigorous waltz that epitomes the effervescent flow of Fledermaus.

Manuel de Falla found continual inspiration in the music and culture of his native Spain. One fertile source, the 19th-century novella El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), led to a full-length ballet created with three-cornered talent: Falla, choreographer Leonid Massine, and no less than Pablo Picasso, who designed the sets and costumes. After the ballet’s sensational 1919 premiere, the prismatic music became widely known through orchestral suites. The second includes the flowing Neighbors’ Dance, which employs seguidillas to conjure up an Andalusian night. A rousing horn and seductive English horn flavor the earthy, flamenco-based Miller’s Dance. The Final Dance draws on the jota to generate a delirious swirl of potent themes and instrumental flourishes.

For some people, Rossini’s William Tell Overture means only one thing—the theme from the radio and TV classic The Lone Ranger. Too bad the pop culture association with that masked man didn’t boost William Tell, an under-performed, ultra-grand opera from 1829 about the Swiss folk hero who was a wicked shot with a bow and arrow. Rossini encapsulates the thrust of the work in the overture. It opens extraordinarily with five solo cellos, evoking a tranquil countryside. A descriptive storm breaks out, followed by the soothing songs of cowherds, suggested by English horn and flute. Trumpet fanfares interrupt this reverie to introduce the dashing gallop universally associated with good guys coming to the rescue.

With his third opera, Manon Lescaut, Puccini became internationally heralded for his uncanny theatrical instincts and flair for melody, harmony, and orchestration. The orchestral Intermezzo that precedes act three conveys what isn’t seen onstage—the materialistic Manon, imprisoned and awaiting deportation, recalling the man who couldn’t stop loving her. From the strings’ soft, slow, almost-Wagnerian opening, the music climbs turbulent, aching peaks before a descending melodic line leads to a poignant close. The late mezzo-soprano Margaret Roggero, a veteran of 600 performances at the Metropolitan Opera, chose this Intermezzo for her funeral because she felt it concisely captured the passion and beauty of the whole operatic art form. Hard to argue with that.

Like Johann Strauss, the ‘D’ in Emile Waldteufel’s DNA stood for dancing; the French composer's father led a dance orchestra and his brother played in one. Waldteufel wrote about 250 pieces, the bulk of them waltzes that were heartily embraced in the highest, twirling social circles of Paris and London. His most popular waltz, Les Patineurs (The Skaters) from 1882, begins quietly with a horn, as if to signal the opening of a rink. Up-and-down flurries and trills in the orchestra suggest that some of the shivering skaters aren’t yet steady on their feet. The waltzing then starts, gliding from tune to hummable, deftly orchestrated tune (a hint of sleigh bells enhances the wintry imagery).

Arkansas-born Florence Price, the first woman of color to have a symphony performed by a major American orchestra (Chicago, 1933), is receiving a long-overdue renaissance. Drawing as freely from classical traditions as from spirituals or jazz, the composer wrote hundreds of vocal and instrumental works. A disarming example from 1953, the year Price died, is Dances in the Canebrakes, originally for piano and orchestrated with idiomatic flair by another gifted African American composer, William Grant Still. Nimble Feet puts a ragtime-like spin on a chipper tune. Latin-flavored melodies emerge in Tropical Noon to a gently pulsing rhythm. Silk Hat and Walking Cane makes it easy to imagine a vintage ballroom filled with elegantly swaying dancers.

In 1899, a Finnish history pageant was staged in Helsinki as a covert protest against Russia’s tight control of the country. Sibelius provided the music and hit a nerve with the closing selection, Finland Awakes, soon revised as a stand-alone piece renamed Finlandia. It symbolized national pride and aspiration for Finns, but spoke just as strongly to audiences elsewhere. Dark, crescendo-spiked chords open the score, leading to brooding reflection. A battle-like section erupts, spiced with assertive brass and percussion, before the music slows and softens for a noble, hymn-like melody, the stirring heart of Finlandia. Aggressive momentum resumes, culminating in a shortened, forceful reprise of the hymn, sounding very much like an anthem for a triumphant people.