Four Seasons

I've got peeps coming this long weekend and have been buzzing around cleaning the house and making beds... well, okay, I did get distracted which has put me behind, but it was all in a good cause.

It's always nice to play music when cleaning, but I'm afraid when Vivaldi's The Four Seasons doco came on the Ovation channel, I had to sit and watch Nigel Kennedy rub the snot out of his violin.

I love The Four Seasons. It's quite simply the most perfect piece of classical music to me, full of passion and nuance. I'm not high-brow enough to regale people on why it's so perfect, it just attracts my ear and I have to listen, have to wallow in the music, be serenaded by it.

My copy is on vinyl with a few Stradivarius violins and conducted by Christopher Hogwood; it's beautiful and it's been too long since I've listened to it. In those strings, all stress seeps away leaving contentment.

I have other favourites, like Mussorgsky's Night on a Bald Mountain and Tchaichovsky's 1812, but Vivaldi is special. I don't know why - maybe it's something in the 'mathematics' of it. All I know is that I cannot do anything other than listen whenever I hear it.

Now I'm behind in my housework, but I'm not bothered, I'll just do it in an hour or so.