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Year of Wonder
- Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day
- Narrated by: Clemency Burton-Hill
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
A unique celebration of classical music that showcases one inspirational piece each day of the year, written by an award-winning violinist and BBC Radio personality.
Classical music has a reputation for being stuffy, boring, and largely inaccessible, but Burton-Hill is here to change that. An award-winning writer, broadcaster, and musician with a deep love of the art form, she wants everyone to feel welcome at the classical party, and her desire to share her passion for its diverse wonders inspired this unique, enlightening, and expertly curated treasury. As she says, “The only requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open mind.”
Year of Wonder introduces listeners to one piece of music each day of the year, artfully selected from across genres, time periods, and composers. Burton-Hill offers short introductions to contextualize each piece and makes the music come alive in modern and playful ways. From Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Puccini to George Gershwin, Clara Schumann, Philip Glass, Duke Ellington, and many remarkable yet often overlooked voices, Burton-Hill takes us on a dazzling journey through our most treasured musical landscape.
Thoughtfully curated and masterfully researched, Year of Wonder is an audiobook of classical music for everyone. Whether you’re a newcomer or an aficionado, Burton-Hill’s celebration will inspire, nourish, and enrich your life in unexpected ways.
Critic reviews
“Year of Wonder is an absolute treat—the most enlightening way to be guided through the year.” (Eddie Redmayne)
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Story
The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him. Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven's career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation.
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Engaging, interesting, nice format
- By George on 07-04-22
By: Laura Tunbridge
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Music Is History
- By: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, Questlove
- Narrated by: Questlove
- Length: 11 hrs
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author and Sundance award-winning director Questlove harnesses his encyclopedic knowledge of popular music and his deep curiosity about history to examine America over the past 50 years. Choosing one essential track from each year, Questlove unpacks each song’s significance, revealing the pivotal role that American music plays around issues of race, gender, politics, and identity.
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This would be better read than listened to
- By HomeChef on 11-05-21
By: Ahmir Khalib Thompson, and others
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This Is Your Brain on Music
- The Science of a Human Obsession
- By: Daniel J. Levitin
- Narrated by: Daniel J. Levitin
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether you load your iPod with Bach or Bono, music has a significant role in your life - even if you never realized it. Why does music evoke such powerful moods? The answers are at last becoming clear, thanks to revolutionary neuroscience and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology. Both a cutting-edge study and a tribute to the beauty of music itself, This Is Your Brain on Music unravels a host of mysteries that affect everything from pop culture to our understanding of human nature.
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Really boring.
- By alex velasquez on 11-24-20
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What listeners say about Year of Wonder
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- PA
- 01-01-19
Unusable
As you'd expect from a successful radio personality, Clemency Burton-Hill's narration of Year of Wonder is effective and engaging. The content is fine -- nothing particularly illuminating or insightful, but an enjoyable and idiosyncratic collection of brief introductory vignettes to lots of fantastic music. As an audiobook, though, this title is fatally flawed. I wasn't expecting the music to be included (the licensing would be a nightmare, presumably), but I was expecting each "chapter" to be a separate track. Instead, however, each track corresponds to a month's worth of intros, and even though Audible ostensibly remembers where I've left off each time, this grouping of ~ 30 essays into each track makes the audiobook very hard to navigate. Whoever made this decision clearly didn't spend even a moment thinking about how this book was designed to be read or listened to. I would steer clear of the audio book, and consider the print version instead.
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60 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 07-02-20
narrator is great but NO Music
says it showcases a classical peice each day but it only includes the intro, it cuts to the next day as soon as she claims "enjoy the following". I guess I should have figured, my disappointment is my own and not the audiobooks fault. The narrator is great and does a fantastic job.
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9 people found this helpful