Barry Forshaw

This delightful volume is the perfect way to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, in which the celebrated musicologist Hannah French presents a new strategy for listening seasonally to the piece, tied into the personal and creative life of the composer. What makes the book particularly valuable (apart from its highly accessible writing style) is the invitation it extends to listen afresh to a piece which has become – let’s face it – overfamiliar, particularly for its grotesque overuse as a piece of ‘holding music’ for telephone messages that spend an age actually putting you through. Listening to the work after a perusal of French’s book is revelatory, particularly as the composer’s world is evoked as vividly as one can imagine, with everything from such topics as health, nature, food, wine and science evoked in the journey. If you haven’t pulled your CD of The Four Seasons from your shelves for a while, Hannah French’s book will inspire you to do so.

The Rolling Year: Listening to the Seasons with Vivaldi by Hannah French is published by Faber