Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Classical Music, Sunday 18 October 2015, 9pm

Tonight Catherine Bott asks, ‘How has fire inspired classical composers?

In tonight's incendiary show, naturally you'd expect Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Manuel De Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance and Handel’s ever sizzling Music for the Royal Fireworks, but did you know that Haydn wrote a 'Fire' Symphony?

And film music maestro Jerry Goldsmith composed a pyrotechnic piece called Fireworks?

GALLERY: Classical music inspired by fire >

There’ll also be two offerings from Gustav Holst - his 'Dance of the Spirits of Fire' from The Perfect Fool, and his Song of the Blacksmith, which leads the way to two other pieces about those hardy souls who work with fire - Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith and the 'Anvil Chorus' from Verdi’s Il trovatore.

There’s also Wagner’s 'Magic Fire Music' from Die Walküre, Hildegard of Bingen’s haunting The Fire of Creation and Morten Lauridsen’s Six Fire Songs on Italian Renaissance Poems.