William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” is the inspiration for this concert. First published in 1889, the poem recalls Yeat’s own deep desire to escape the grey city life of industrial London for a simple, quiet life of peace by the lapping water of the lake in the place of his youth in Sligo, Ireland. This was perhaps a fascinating time in 19th-century history, a wrestling of the merits and detriments of the Industrial Revolution and one in which we witness the first early music revival spearheaded by Arnold Dolmetsch and supported by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, of which George Bernard Shaw and William Morris were members. We will explore the music from a wider expanse of centuries (17th, 18th, 19th and even the 21st centuries) and with particular reverence for the history of a people that has never ceased to love the land and its simplicity.