Harriet Constable

Featured Book

‘Anna Maria della Pietà had notes before she had words. And those notes always had colours.’

In 1704 there lived a girl. She was an orphan, a musical prodigy, the favourite student of Antonio Vivaldi.
And she became the greatest violinist of the 18th century. From the jewelled palaces of Venice to its mud
licked canals, this is a story of one woman’s irrepressible ambition and rise to the top, of loss and triumph, and of who we choose to remember and leave behind on the path to success.

Uncovering the story of Anna Maria della Pietà and how she became the greatest violinist of the 18th century, The Instrumentalist shows us the roots of classical music as they have never been told before. Taking us into the mind of a composer and performer, one remarkable fact shines bright: we might have a
group of orphans who were destined to drown in Venice’s murky canals to thank for the most famous piece of classical music in the world: The Four Seasons.

It is time to meet the woman we should have been talking about for the past 300 years.