This book, which is a combination of music/text/pictures, is an excellent way to experience Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." Many people are familiar with the music, but how many know that sonnets were printed along with it, to help give imagery to the concertos as they're heard? This book takes that idea one step further, adding prints of paintings from artists who were active during Vivaldi's lifetime. All of these prints depict scenes from the various seasons, and all can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The aforementioned sonnets appear alongside the prints, and are listed in both English and the original Italian verse.
A few notes: the music comes in the form of a CD, and it is encased in plastic on the inside back cover of the book. One should be careful when removing the plastic, because if you remove too much of it, you won't have a place to store the CD. I cut a slit a few inches down so that I can remove the CD but also return it there when finished. There is no "jewel case" for the CD. On a positive note, an extra concerto was included on the CD, which is not part of "The Four Seasons." Vivaldi's "Concerto for Mandolin" etc. (RV 425) can be found at the end of the CD, an unexpected bonus!
Four stars. A nice little combination to be experiecned together - listen to the music, read the sonnets, and view the paitings. This makes an excellent inexpensive gift for a music lover (or even for yourself)!