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Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons)

Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) · sheet music

  • Time 3/4
  • Levels 7–9
  • Passages 20

Your turn · both hands

 

 

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Antonio Vivaldi, Italian baroque (1678–1741). The reading release has 32 passages from this piece at levels 7–9; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 65–68 for both hands together.

Practice the hard bars →

The hardest stretch is bars 1–4 at level 9.

Your practice path

Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons).

  1. Hands together · bars 65–68 level 7

How to play Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons)

  1. Tempo:Presto means very fast, but you can start at half speed; learn each phrase slowly and let the tempo rise only when your fingers feel loose.
  2. Reading:Check the key signature before you start, and watch for F sharp, G minor's raised leading tone, which keeps appearing as an accidental; scan each phrase for accidentals before playing.
  3. Right hand:The right hand plays the racing sixteenth-note scale runs, so keep your hand relaxed and let the wrist guide the fingers rather than pressing each key.
  4. Left hand:The left hand plays the driving bass and repeated chords; keep it steady and quiet so the right hand can sparkle above it.
  5. Dynamics:Contrast is part of the storm: practice the sudden drops to soft and the sudden returns to loud, and make each change clear.
  6. Hands together:Practice hands separately until each hand can play its part without looking, then combine them at half speed and increase gradually.
  7. Fingering:Decide where your thumb passes under in each scale run and write the finger numbers in; keep the same fingering each time.
  8. Practice:Use short loops of four notes and gradually extend them, and try playing the runs in dotted rhythms before returning to even sixteenths.

Common mistakes

  • Starting too fast and tripping over the sixteenth-note runs. Fix: Set the metronome low and increase by small steps only after three clean repeats.
  • Forgetting the raised leading tone in G minor. Fix: Play the harmonic minor scale before practicing the piece so the accidentals are familiar.
  • Holding tension in the right shoulder and wrist during the fast runs. Fix: Pause between phrases, shake out your hands, and keep the wrist level and loose.
  • Playing everything at one dynamic and losing the storm's drama. Fix: Mark where the music grows and where it drops back, and practice those contrasts on purpose.

Structure: ritornello form

The Presto alternates a recurring full-orchestra theme, the ritornello, with solo episodes for the violin. It begins and ends in G minor, but the middle of the movement travels through related keys such as D minor and C minor before the storm returns home. The pace never lets up until the final chords.

Opening · First ritornello (G minor)
Fast repeated figures and rising runs set off the storm. This is where your hands meet the repeated sixteenth-note patterns.
Middle · Solo episodes and returning ritornellos (D minor)
The violin takes over with running sixteenth notes while the orchestra's theme returns in other keys. Expect more accidentals as the music moves away from home.
Close · Final ritornello (G minor)
The storm theme returns in G minor and drives to the end. Hold the tempo steady and watch for the final accents.

About Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons)

The Presto is the stormy finale of Summer, the second concerto of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The set was published in 1725 in Amsterdam as part of his Op. 8, though the concertos were probably composed some years earlier, around 1718 to 1723, while he worked in Mantua. Each concerto has a sonnet to match, and the sonnet for the Summer finale describes thunder and hail cutting down the ripe grain.

The Presto leaves behind the heavy heat of the first movement and the restless middle one, where the shepherd cannot sleep for fear of thunder and buzzing flies. Now the storm actually breaks: the strings race through repeated notes and rapid figures, with full-orchestra passages and solo episodes taking turns.

Summer is the darkest of the four concertos, with all three of its movements in G minor. Its finale works well as a standalone excerpt, which is how it appears in piano arrangements like the ones on this page.

  • The sonnet attached to Summer ends with hail cutting off the heads of the wheat, which is the event this finale depicts.
  • The sonnet for Summer's first movement names three birds, a cuckoo, a turtledove, and a finch, before a north wind threatens the coming storm.
  • No one knows who wrote the Four Seasons sonnets, but Vivaldi may have written them himself.
  • Nigel Kennedy's 1989 recording of The Four Seasons sold more than three million copies worldwide.

Why the first passage is level 7

That passage is level 7 rather than 6 because a hand covers more than one position, it runs fast figuration.

These passages are from a piano arrangement of the orchestral concerto, in triple meter with fast repeated sixteenth-note patterns and frequent accidentals.

Questions about Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons)

How hard is Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons) to play?
Its passages grade from level 7 to level 9 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, so the full piece is intermediate to advanced reading. The hardest stretch is bars 1–4 at level 9.
Is there an easy part of Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons) for beginners?
Its easiest passage is level 7, so it suits a reader past the beginner stage. Start with bars 65–68 for both hands together, the level-7 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 7 because a hand covers more than one position and it runs fast figuration.
What key and time signature is Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons) in?
The engraving on this page is in 3/4 time.
Who composed Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons)?
Antonio Vivaldi, Italian baroque (1678–1741). The Presto is the stormy finale of Summer, the second concerto of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.
Can I practice Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons) online for free?
Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the 20 graded passages from Summer: III. Presto (The Four Seasons) in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
What is the story behind the Summer Presto?
The sonnet for the finale describes the summer storm the shepherd feared, with thunder and hail cutting down the grain. The fast, driving music is meant to sound like that storm.
What does Presto mean?
Presto is Italian for very fast. It is one of the fastest standard tempo markings in classical music.
How is Summer different from Spring?
Spring is in E major and pictures birdsong and a pastoral dance, while Summer is in G minor and moves from oppressive heat to a destructive storm. Both are part of the same set of four concertos.

Every passage, easiest first

The reading release grades 20 distinct passages of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:

Level 7
bars 65–68 both hands
Level 8
bars 21–24 both hands
Level 9
bars 1–4 both hands · bars 5–8 both hands · bars 9–16 both hands · bars 9–12 both hands · bars 9–20 both hands · bars 13–16 both hands · bars 17–24 both hands · bars 17–20 both hands · bars 25–32 both hands · bars 25–28 both hands · bars 29–32 both hands · bars 33–36 both hands · bars 53–56 both hands · bars 57–60 both hands · bars 57–64 both hands · bars 61–64 both hands · bars 65–72 both hands · bars 69–72 both hands

More pieces to sight-read

Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261023-identity-audit reading release.

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