It is not only poets and writers who found the Orient a source of inspiration: European composers were also transported by the exoticism of faraway lands. In the concerto for piano and orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns, which was composed in Luxor and bears the subtitle The Egyptian, the sounds of the Orient and the Far East can clearly be heard. This French composer – an inveterate traveller well into his old age – let the impressions he had gathered feed through into his compositions. 19th-century Russia, too, was captivated by all things oriental. This influence led Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov to compose his symphonic suite Scheherazade, a setting of the fairytale in which Princess Scheherazade manages to mollify the Sultan, her tyrannical husband, by telling him stories. Stanisław Moniuszko's ouverture to Bajka (The Fairytale) also transports the listener to the fairytale world. To this day it is not known which fairytale Moniuszko was thinking of. There is one small clue, though: the action takes place in winter. For all the rest, we must fall back on our imagination.