I can think of few better musical evocations of the arrival of Spring than the first movement of Robert Schumann’s Spring Symphony. From its opening trumpet fanfare to its helter-skelter coda, it bursts with optimism and, as such, it I find it the ideal accompaniment to a country walk at this time of year. I recommend the 1998 recording by the Orchestre révolutionnaire et romantique under Sir John Eliot Gardiner. It’s a relief that the ‘long months’, as my mother calls them, are once again behnd us.