Summer Music

‘Summer Music’ is the title of Samuel Barber’s dreamy wind quintet, and rarely does music succeed so well in capturing a mood: the music truly sounds like summer, peaceful and still, where the heat is by turns languid and shimmering. The piece is finely crafted, with each of the five parts carefully crafted; a real gem. It is also difficult to play, but the Musikkollegium can be proud of its wind players, who showcase their artistry here. The second quintet they have chosen also hails from America. It was written by the composer David Maslanka (1943–2017), who made a name for himself particularly as a composer for wind instruments. The vastness of his adopted home, Montana, can be heard here and there in his second quintet from 1986. The first five minutes, however, are full of joy and enthusiasm to the point of ecstasy, before the piece comes to a dramatic, calm conclusion. In the second movement, pastoral and jazzy sections alternate; the horn sings expressively up to the highest registers, and at the end the music mysteriously fades away. Finally, the third movement varies the same three chords over and over. Thus, the Baroque ‘chaconne’ and modern ‘minimal music’ intersect, and Maslanka succeeds in crafting five thrilling minutes of music from this, using ever-changing wind combinations and shifting musical moods. This is followed by a kind of chorale as a coda, which in a sense draws conclusions from all the movements, and with which Maslanka once again demonstrates his ingenuity in terms of instrumentation, harmony and form. As a special treat, there is also Shostakovich, and anyone who has ever heard his famous Jazz Waltz arranged for wind quintet can scarcely imagine the piece performed on any other instruments.