Set course for our annual trip to the North Pole just in time to see the Northern Lights, meet Father Christmas and have a dance with a snowman or two. The Snowman has become an unparalleled Christmas tradition, and The Bear is a perfect counterpart telling the story of Tilly’s attempts to help an escaped polar bear return home.

Leon McCawley, one of Britain’s foremost pianists, has forged a highly successful career since winning first prize in the 1993 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna and second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition the same year.

Check in to the city of Vienna as we are treated to an audience with one of the greatest composers of all time, and who better to make the introductions than Steven Isserlis, one of the world’s most distinguished musicians.

Stride on to the beautiful rolling countryside of the Malvern Hills. Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations is a set of charming characterizations of all his friends with a backdrop of the Worcestershire and Herefordshire countryside.

Take five in Paris, the early twentieth century city and the centre of the new age and a melting pot of composers, dancers, artists, thinkers and writers. There is no doubt this amazing place and time significantly influenced the music of Gershwin and Stravinsky and many of their contemporaries.