Sounds of Summer

Summer’s sunny days and sultry nights have been the inspiration for poets, painters and composers through the ages. Musical portraits of summer come in many styles and from some surprising composers. We know and love Antonio Vivaldi’s “Summer” from the Four Seasons, but what about Anton Webern’s Im Sommerwind? Gramophone’s James Jolly offers some favorites and surprises in his list of musical works inspired by the season when the mercury is rising.

Vivaldi The Four Seasons – Venice Baroque Orchestra / Giuliano Carmignola (Sony Classical)

Few pieces had captured the languor, heat and laziness of summer as languidly as Vivaldi's Four Seasons; but his summer is not without a bracing blast of rhythmic vigour too. Giuliano Carmignola relives those idyllic summer days for us with his splendid Venetian colleagues.

Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Sony Music)

Ravel Daphnis et Chloé Suite No 2

The dawning of new day – and a summer's day at that, surely – is spectacularly evoked by Ravel at the start of his second Daphnis suite. The brightening of the light, the dawn chorus of birds, the warming of the land – all these are vividly painted.

Ravel: Ravel: Daphnis et Chloé Suite Nos.1 & 2 (RCA)

Barber Summer Music

Samuel Barber's gift for melody is here matched by a flavoursome use of five wind instruments in his Summer Music, a gentle and slightly drowsy piece. (Rather charmingly Barber declined a fee but suggested the audience at the premiere make a contribution – I hope he was handsomely rewarded for this lovely piece.)

Barber: Cello Sonata; Excursions; Summer Music (EMI)

Piazzolla Verano porteño

The Argentinian tango-master Astor Piazzolla rose to the challenge of Vivaldi's seasons with an enchanting quartet of his own. Of course, summer in the southern hemisphere is a rather different proposition but it draws out some spirited sounds, and there's that omnipresent sense of rhythm pulsing away under everything.

Piazolla: : Libertango (EMI)

Barber Knoxville Summer of 1915

Barber's summer in Knoxville is a heady, siesta-inducing afternoon in the Deep South, a young girl's quirky but intense vision. Gorgeously scored, this must be every lyric soprano's dream and few do it more poetically than Karina Gauvin with Marin Alsop's imaginative support.

Barber: Knoxville, Summer of 1915 (Naxos)

Suk A Summer’s Tale

Josef Suk, son-in-law of Antonín Dvorak, was a composer of real personality in a rich, late romantic music language. His Summer's Tale forms part of an huge orchestral tetralogy launched by the despairing Asrael. It's still tinged with melancholy but its reach is immense and its power colossal. The Czech love for the malevolent and slightly spooky threads its way through the score.

Suk: Symphonie Asrael (Virgin Classics)

Webern Im Sommerwind

This is Webern before his conversion to the atonal principles espoused by his teacher Arnold Schoenberg. This is a lush – no, super-lush – tone-poem for a huge orchestra that conjures up glorious visions of opulence in a mood of gentle contemplation. It's a fabulous score for a great orchestra to tackle, and the Chicago Symphony is on magnificent form here.

Webern: Im Sommerwind (CSO Resound)

Delius Summer Night on the River

English-born, but Florida- and French-based, Frederick Delius captured the warmth and haze of a perfect English summer's night. The richness of the orchestration and the slithery harmonies create a superbly atmospheric vision of the dying of the day over the still of water. No one sounds quite like Delius!

Delius: Orchestral Works (EMI)

Haydn Die Jahreszeiten

Haydn's last oratorio The Seasons gets back to the land and portrays a family group seen through the passing of the year. In it Haydn links the inevitable cycle of nature to his firmly-held belief in God's goodness and mercy – the piece is at once charmingly intimate and majestically public. And boy, could he write a good tune!

Haydn: Die Jahreszeiten (LSO Live)

Tchaikovsky The Seasons

Tchaikovsky's piano suite The Seasons trots through the year month by month with a charm and elegance that's not surprising when you consider his enormous gift for melody. His summer months – May to August – take us from a starlit night, through a swaying barcarolle to a celebration of the harvester's life. All done with the lightest of touches.

Tchaikovsky: The Seasons (Naxos)

Beethoven Symphony No 6, Pastoral

Perhaps the first full-scale programmatic symphony, Beethoven's Sixth is an understandable 'hit' – full of melody and so beautifully painted that even if you're unaware of the 'plot' everything comes vividly to life as you listen. Many conductors have recorded this work, but it take a special kind of poise and lack of hurry to pull it off does it beautifully.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 "Pastoral" (EMI)

by James Jolly, Gramophone Magazine