Chill out with a cool playlist for the hottest summer days

It might be blasphemy to think longingly about winter during the fun-filled days of summer. But with this week’s furnace-like blast across much of the nation, you might want to enjoy some music that conjures snow, wind and cold. Here is a cool playlist to get you through the heat.

“Troika” (from Sergey Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kije suite): Forget Sleigh Ride — nothing summons dashing through the snow like this celesta-and-sleigh-bells fantasia. Prokofiev fleshed out a 16th-century light cavalry tune with a horn line that echoes a call to the hunt.

Sinfonia Antartica (Ralph Vaughn Williams): The title says it all; the work was adapted from Vaughn Williams’ score for the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic. His eerie, ethereal strings and spectral vocalizations (plus an expanded percussion section that includes a wind machine!) evoke the vast tundra. Listen to the first movement.  

The Snow Is Dancing (Claude Debussy): The syncopation and subtly repeating musical motifs in this delicate piano composition put the listener inside a swirling snow globe. Written as part of the six-song Children’s Corner, it indeed has a childlike quality that calls up our earliest fascination with snow.

“Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind” (John Rutter): This was composed in 1975 as part of the song cycle When Icicles Hang, and you can almost hear those icicles tinkling in the opening bells. The lyrics (“Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky”) come from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  

“Winter” (from Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons): You didn’t think we’d leave this one out! The soaring, percussive strings of the first and third movements will give you the shivers — in a good way. Listen to the first movement.