Composed over two years spanning the very dawn of the 19th century, Haydn’s four-part oratorio The Seasons (Die Jahreszeiten) was designed to capitalise on the huge popularity of The Creation. Once again, Haydn’s collaborator was the diplomat, librarian and librettist, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. As with The Creation, the libretto was based on an English-language source, in this case the sprawling, diffuse but highly influential poem The Seasons (1726–1730) by the Scotsman John Thomson (whose other claim to fame is the lyrics of ‘Rule, Britannia!’). In condensing Thomson’s vast work to more manageable proportions, van Swieten drew on other sources as well as his own invention, to create a work in which three soloists – the peasant farmer Simon (bass), his daughter Hanne (soprano) and the village youth Lukas (tenor) – are channels for various musings and scenarios on the character of the four seasons as seen through the perspective of rural life. They interact with the (largely four-part) chorus, and the forces are similar to those of The Creation (the same soloists sang both works).

Even in Haydn’s last years, The Seasons was overshadowed by The Creation, yet in many ways the two works are complementary – the earlier work proceeding from God alone amid chaos to the creation of Man, while The Seasons proceeds from vivid depictions of rural life to a philosophical consideration of Man as he confronts God in the twilight of Winter. (Both Haydn and his close contemporary van Swieten were indeed approaching their final years.) The quality of the libretto has been criticised ever since the work’s first performances, but thanks to Haydn’s music the work achieves a remarkable equilibrium between the popular (including rousing hunting and drinking choruses) and the philosophical, culminating in a great hymn of praise to God for soloists and double chorus.

Like The Creation, The Seasons has been well served on disc, particularly since the advent of historically-informed performances where period instruments add an extra bucolic edginess and fervour to the vigorous music of Haydn’s old age. Gardiner, Jacobs and McCreesh have all made fine recordings, and now Jordi Savall joins their ranks, four years after his splendid account of The Creation. Once again, his performance benefits from the warm, generous acoustic of the Collegiate Church of Sant Vicenç at the Castle of Cardona. The tenor and bass soloists – Tilman Lichdi and Matthias Winckhler – return, this time with the pure-toned soprano Lina Johnson. The choir of the Capella Nacional de Catalunya is just 21 voices strong, yet they lack nothing in presence, and combine vivid projection and clarity of line with a palpable sense of involvement, well-balanced against the instrumentalists of Le Concert des Nations.

The solo vocal work is excellent, Lichdi making a characterful youth, his more reflective passages beautifully shaped and paced, while Winckhler is a benign presence, perhaps less characterful than some, but ideally suited for the ripe wisdom of adulthood. Johnson combines heartfelt human emotion with angelic tones, and her exquisite aria in Summer, ‘Welche Labung für die Sinne’, is one of the performance’s many highlights.

As the work moves via the vibrant pictorialism of Summer and Autumn via the Spinning Song and praise of toil in Winter to the more philosophical elements of the final pages, the strengths of Savall’s performance – just as vivid in its way as René Jacobs’ 2003 on Harmonia Mundi, but with a crucial degree more warmth and expressiveness – become ever more apparent. Aided by some splendidly characterful solo playing, from the thunderous opening timpani thwacks to the clucking of the oboe, ardent solo horn passages, and the raucous sound of the offstage hunt, this account combines pictorial immediacy with a rounded, mature vision of the whole.

At a time when the traditional seasons themselves are in turmoil from the challenges of climate change, the gentle humour and sagacity of Haydn’s late style, anticipating the Romantic Philosophy of Nature, is a welcome tonic, and a timely reminder of a way of life that may be gone forever. No-one who has already heard Savall’s wonderful recording of The Creation will want to be without these Seasons. Unhesitatingly recommended!