Price: $18.46

A children’s introduction to Beethoven, this is the story of a young boy called Christoph who lives in 1820s Vienna. After his father’s death, his mother takes in a lodger who Christoph thinks is a madman - eccentric, unkempt in the extreme and constantly making a racket in his room. He writes to his uncle to complain, and the story continues in the form of letters between the two of them. The boy’s initial hostility towards the lodger (none other than Ludwig Van Beethoven) softens and eventually, as the premiere of the 9th symphony approaches, they kinda become friends.

Beethoven’s music underscores the text throughout - symphonies 5-9, the Moonlight and Pathetique sonatas and lots more. The music isn’t separate from the story, it’s more like the soundtrack - I guess the theory is that your child (and you) will come to know and love the tunes by osmosis. It’s hard to tell how well the theory has worked on Isabelle - I did try to see how she’d get on listening to the 5th symphony on its own one day and was amazed at how quiet she was being until I realised she had fallen asleep.

She really loves this CD though, whatever about the theory. On our first listen in the car during our summer holidays she dozed off halfway through and we thought it was obviously too old for her and were trying to decide what older kid to pass it on to (it didn’t help either that Niamh took against the boy narrator, Christoph, because he was “a whinger”). When she woke up she surprised us by demanding to continue listening, and then demanding the album regularly (along with Peter and the Wolf) all through the holiday (and since).

The story really draws you in after a while (even Niamh got to like Christoph eventually) - it’s fiction, of course, but you feel like you’re getting a real insight into the composer’s life and times - and naturally the music is fantastic. So while I can’t guarantee that your children will be able to tell the 7th symphony from the 6th after listening to this, if they’re anything like mine they’ll enjoy listening to it (Isabelle grandly declared that this is the third best CD ever, after Rompe and Mamma Mia) and you might too.