Autumn has arrived, bringing crisp air, rustling leaves, and the occasional dramatic thunderstorm. There’s something primordial and invigorating about a tempest brewing outside, especially when you can enjoy it from the cozy indoors with the right music. In an attempt to harness this magic, classical composers have woven thunderstorms and tempests into some of their most famous works. So, in this week’s Classical Considerations, we celebrate the season with five pieces that let you experience the thrill of a storm in music, no umbrella necessary.

1. Beethoven: Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral” – 4th Movement (Thunderstorm)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, nicknamed the Pastoral, is an early Romantic tribute to nature that prominently features a vivid thunderstorm scene. Beethoven was a great lover of the countryside and gave each movement of this symphony a programmatic title, the fourth being Gewitter, Sturm (“Thunder, Storm”). Premiering in Vienna amid an epic four-hour concert, the Pastoral Symphony broke new ground by bringing the sounds of babbling brooks, bird calls, and  a full-blown thunderstorm into the concert hall. Beethoven called for extra instruments, including trombones, trumpets, and a piccolo, reserving them almost exclusively for this storm movement to maximize its impact.

This brief movement begins quietly, with low cellos and basses rumbling in a tremolo to suggest distant thunder and a few violin eighth-notes pattering like the first drops of rain. As dark clouds gather, Beethoven gradually unleashes the full fury of the elements: the timpani pounds out thunderclaps, the high piccolo shrieks in lightning flashes, and swirling violins whip up ferocious winds. At the height of the squall the orchestra reaches its loudest and most dissonant before, as quickly as it arrived, the tempest passes. The thunder subsides with a final rumble, and Beethoven seamlessly transitions into the gentle finale played on a solo flute.

2. Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony (excerpt: Thunderstorm)

Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony, 1915) is a lavish tone poem that depicts a full day’s mountain hike, from daybreak to night, complete with a colossal afternoon storm in the Alps. Strauss was inspired by an Alpine adventure from his youth when he and some friends lost their way on a mountain and were drenched in a sudden storm. Determined to capture nature’s majesty and terror, he scored this single-movement work for one of the largest orchestras ever assembled, with quadruple woodwinds, eight horns (plus a dozen more offstage), an organ, two harps, and an array of novel instruments including a wind machine and thunder sheet.

Throughout the storm scene, the organ pedals underpin the chaos with ominous, rumbling chords while piccolos and high trumpets stab out shrill blasts through the “sky”, and the massed strings race through rapid descending scales like torrential rain. At the peak of the tempest Strauss uses brass fanfares and pounding percussion to make it feel as if the very mountains are shuddering under the onslaught. When, finally, the storm clouds part, the listener is left awestruck at the scope and gravity of Strauss’s cinematic turbulence.

3. Britten: Four Sea Interludes – “Storm” (from Peter Grimes)

Fast-forward to the 20th century English coastline, where Benjamin Britten painted one of the sea’s most ferocious moods in the “Storm” interlude from his opera Peter Grimes. Britten grew up by the North Sea in Suffolk and had a lifelong fascination with the ocean. Peter Grimes, his breakthrough opera, is set in a bleak fishing village, and he penned four orchestral Sea Interludes to be played in concert. The final interlude, “Storm,” portrays a tempest lashing the village in which his opera is set as Act I draws to a close. In true Britten fashion, this piece manages to be sharply modern yet viscerally exciting, a storm painted in bold musical colors.

Britten’s storm music paints a chaotic seascape with vividly original orchestration. The movement launches with swirling figures and off-kilter rhythms that immediately suggest a gale brewing off the coast. Violins and woodwinds skitter in edgy, windswept gusts; brass and percussion crash in with sudden fortissimo waves pounding the shore; and the whole orchestra surges with a gnashing, atonal fury that leaves the listener disoriented. At times the meter shifts unpredictably, and Britten uses extreme dynamic swings, from roaring full orchestra to eerie lulls, to recreate the erratic lulls and violent squalls of a real storm.

4. Verdi: Otello, Act I: The Storm

Not to be outdone in drama, Giuseppe Verdi opened his late masterpiece Otello (1887) with one of the most famous tempests in all of opera. Adapted from Shakespeare’s Othello, the opera begins on a Cypriot harbor battered by a nighttime squall as the townsfolk anxiously watch Otello’s ship try to make port in the storm. Lightning flashes, thunder booms, wind howls, and amid it all a chorus of sailors and Cypriot citizens shout prayers and warnings into the gale.

Verdi’s orchestration in the Otello storm was ahead of its time: the organ in the pit sustains three clashing notes as an ominous drone throughout the storm, while the woodwinds and violins play frenetic scale patterns. Trombones, trumpets, and cymbals join forces in explosive accents that strike like unpredictable thunderbolts. Over the orchestra, the chorus (playing panicked Cypriots onstage) cry out “All is lost!” and pray for deliverance, their massed voices nearly drowned by the tempest’s din. Finally comes the cathartic moment: Otello’s ship arrives safely. Simultaneously the storm begins to abate, the organ’s dissonant chord releases, the winds and waves in the orchestra calm, and the chorus erupts in cheers of victory.

5. Berlioz: Les Troyens – “Royal Hunt and Storm”

French composer Hector Berlioz had a flair for the grandiose, and nowhere is this more evident than in the “Royal Hunt and Storm” from his epic opera Les Troyens (1858). This purely orchestral episode serves as the entr’acte before Act IV – a massive symphonic tableau depicting a royal hunt in the forests of Carthage that is interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm.  Berlioz, ever the innovator, intended this piece as a pantomime with no sung words, relying entirely on the orchestra (plus some creative stage effects) to tell the story.

Berlioz’s score pulls out all the stops to bring this storm to life. It begins serenely: woodwinds and strings evoke a languid, sultry afternoon in the woods, complete with nymphs (woodwind melodies) frolicking by a quiet pool. But before long, dark clouds gather and the orchestra erupts as the thunderstorm breaks: horn fanfares ring out wildly, now transformed into frantic hunting signals as the party scatters for cover; lower strings and tremolo violas redound while the timpani and bass drum roll and boom. Berlioz combines all these elements into a rich, tumultuous wall of sound. At the storm’s height, he even introduces an eerie, otherworldly touch: an offstage chorus of nymphs emerges in snatches, their voices riding on the wind and rain. The effect is haunting and almost cinematic, as if the storm itself had a literal voice.

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There’s a special thrill in experiencing a storm through music, especially as the autumn weather turns unpredictable. Each of these pieces lets us savor the drama of thunder and rain without getting wet, a perfect pastime for a blustery fall evening. From Beethoven’s early 19th-century thunderstorm to Britten’s mid-20th-century tempest, composers across eras have loved unleashing the elements in their music, reminding us of nature’s fury and our powerlessness in the face of it.

– Matthew Young

Many of the composers referenced above, including Beethoven, Richard Strauss, and Benjamin Britten, are featured this fall on The Classical Station. Please take a look at our Fall 2025 Highlights to see when to tune in, or request a piece directly via one of our Request Programs!