Serge Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballets Russes, commissioned some of the most enduring ballet scores of the 20th century, from composers such as Claude Debussy (“Jeux”), Maurice Ravel (“Daphnis and Chloe”), Manuel de Falla (“The Three-Cornered Hat”) and especially Igor Stravinsky (“The Firebird,” “Petrushka” and “The Rite of Spring”).

Less well known is the fact that he approached two Englishmen to write music for his famed and influential company.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll be listening to works by Constant Lambert and Lord Berners – both figures so diverse in their interests, and possessing such outsized personalities, that it isn’t really possible to do either justice in the time allotted.

Lambert was a brilliant polymath. In addition to his considerable talents as a composer, he was a conductor, arranger, and writer, as well as the lover of Margot Fonteyn. Alas, alcoholism and workaholism conspired with undiagnosed diabetes to hasten his demise at the age of 45.

His ballet, “Romeo and Juliet,” presented as a play-within-a-play, turns Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers on its head, with the leads falling hard in a backstage romance with happier results. Lambert would go on to greater things, but the ballet is undeniably an impressive piece of work for a 20 year-old.

Similarly, Lord Berners’ interests lay all over the place, but his was a much more relaxed character. Unfailingly productive as a composer, a painter and a writer, he never lost sight of the fact that his life would be his magnum opus. And Berners lived well.

Furthermore, his fortune ensured that he would never be taken to task for any of his whimsical behavior. This included having a 140-foot folly tower constructed on his estate (partly to annoy the neighbors) and inviting a horse to his indoor tea parties.

Berners wrote novels, painted portraits (always certain to include a moustache, whether the sitter had one or not), and composed a respectable amount of music, especially for the ballet.

For the Ballets Russes, he wrote “The Triumph of Neptune,” which became a great favorite of Sir Thomas Beecham. Sacheverell Sitwell provided the scenario, which concerns a sailor who is shipwrecked en route to Fairyland, and George Balanchine supplied the choreography.

I hope you’ll join me for “England à la Russe,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6, or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Berners, no doubt contemplating the placement of a moustache