Pastorale d'été (Honegger)

Pastorale d’été, H. 31 (Summer Pastoral), is a short symphonic poem for chamber orchestra by Arthur Honegger.

[6] The first British concert performance was on 27 October 1921 conducted by Eugene Goossens in the Queen's Hall, London.

Honegger conducted a recording of the work himself,[8] as have Hermann Scherchen, Jean Martinon (1971), Michel Plasson (1991), Leonard Bernstein, David Zinman, Thierry Fischer, Charles Dutoit and many others.

As part of the narrative of the novel Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe (published 2013) there is an imaginative and detailed description of the Pastorale in the chapter entitled 'The trouble with happiness'.

It pays particular attention to the orchestration and to the overall shape of the piece, e.g. "...the main theme was by now beginning to take on the character of an old friend: once again, it rose and fell, rose and fell, a soft, endlessly renewable conversation between the different sections of the orchestra; until it too faded into nothingness, amid the dying flourishes of gossamer-bowed violins, the last twilit birdcalls of flute and clarinet.