Summertimes: Summer music with the Berliner Philharmoniker

Over the centuries, the different seasons have repeatedly inspired composers to create outstanding works: Antonio Vivaldi, Joseph Haydn and Astor Piazzolla translated the natural cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter completely into sound, Robert Schumann wrote a Spring Symphony, Igor Stravinsky his ballet Le Sacre du printemps, and Franz Schubert a winter journey – Winterreise.

Our playlist brings together works in performances by the Philharmoniker inspired by summer. The climatic and emotional degrees of heat conveyed in the music vary considerably – depending on whether one finds oneself in the ancient Athens of Felix Mendelssohn’s shimmering, sensuous Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the Spain of your dreams with Debussy, or with Respighi’s Fontane di Roma in what the composer described as the “freshly humid haze of a Roman dawn”.

Richard Wagner allowed himself a summer break, so to speak, from his demanding work on the Ring when he composed the beguilingly lyrical Siegfried Idyll for his wife Cosima’s birthday in 1870. For Josef Suk, who Kirill Petrenko holds in particularly high regard, the invocation of summer also had a symbolic meaning: his A Summer’s Tale, shimmering in Impressionistic colours, is an attempt to overcome a serious life crisis through creative work.