TRADITIONALLY, the Ryedale Festival brochure heralds the arrival of spring. Right on cue, warmer weather swept into North Yorkshire on Sunday, the very day that the festival unveiled its plans for July, once we had explored the musings of Rêverie: the life and loves of Claude Debussy.

In truth, it was the composer’s vivid love-life that dominated the writings read by Simon Russell Beale, his (and their) sardonic tone ripe with tongue-in-cheek, mildly self-mocking humour. By his own admission, Debussy had a roving eye. His first piano piece, Danse Bohémienne, was inspired by a love affair; it was brought to amorous life by Lucy Parham, who illuminated the writings from the keyboard.

Debussy’s longest relationship was with Gaby Dupont – the Rêverie comes from their nine years together, as well as a gamelan-inspired waltz – but his first wife, Lilly Texier, was "the girl with the flaxen hair". The ecstasy of Jardins Sous La Pluie also owes something to their blissful romance.

But it was short-lived: a mere four years later he took up with an old flame of Fauré’s, Emma Bardac, who became his second wife (they honeymooned in Eastbourne) and the mother of his daughter, Chouchou, to whom we owe Golliwogg’s Cake-walk, her favourite piece.

Along the way, we encountered Claire de Lune and a tricky étude, not to mention glinting fish and "scattered harmonics". As a picture of Debussy it was inevitably one-sided; as an evening’s entertainment it was charming.