Kodály's first significant orchestral work (not including an overture he'd written for his school orchestra in 1898) was Summer Evening, composed in 1906 and first performed at a music academy graduation concert. Kodály heavily revised the work in 1929 at the suggestion of Arturo Toscanini, who conducted it the following year with the New York Philharmonic. This is the version heard and recorded today.

It's an idyll for chamber orchestra—no percussion or brass, except for the horns that are blended into the woodwind section. Despite its evocative title, the piece carries no particular program. Kodály noted simply that "it was conceived on summer evenings, amid harvested cornfields, by the ripples of the Adriatic." Not the loose rhapsody the title implies, this music is firmly hung on an elaborated sonata form.

At the very beginning, the English horn sings out the work's most important theme: long, soft, expressive, and flowing. This is taken up by the strings, then presented in several variant forms, interlacing brief woodwind solos with more forceful statements by the string section. After this mini development comes a new motif, a soft, short, fluid two-bar phrase offered by oboe, then flute, and soon strings bringing it to a crescendo. Kodály now brings on the rest of his thematic material more quickly: first, a melody in the violins containing a couple of very Hungarian-sounding twisting triplets, and then a sharply marked figure in the oboe, immediately repeated by full orchestra, that ends with a quick upward flourish. Kodály next subjects all these themes to a full development so intense that it hardly seems nocturnal anymore. The mood eventually relaxes for a loose recapitulation of the four themes, unwinding into a soft, atmospheric conclusion.

© James Reel, All Music Guide