Like Donna Summer's previous American releases, Love to Love You Baby and A Love Trilogy, Four Seasons of Love is an extended exercise in ecstasy, but where the earlier albums had sustained their lush, throbbing title tracks for one entire side, pushing the long LP cut to its logical extreme, here the whole album is one continuous song cycle. Four Seasons traces the blossoming and eventual withering of a love affair from the exhilarating "Spring Affair" through the steamy, passionate "Summer Fever" and ominous "Autumn Changes" to a crisp, lovely end in "Winter Melody," which blends back into a reprise of "Spring" and the promise of a new affair. The music is one unbroken landscape, interrupted only by the changing of sides.

Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, who produce Summer's records in Germany with the "Munich Machine," Europe's answer to MFSB, again mesh the orgasmic ebb and flow of lovemaking with the euphoric energy of disco dancing, creating the perfect pulsing back drop to Summer's breathy, seething vocals. The songs build and break, surging on clean sweeps of violins, but because they ease off before reaching a climax, Summer and the orchestra are able to keep it up indefinitely without dissipating the record's vibrant energy. For some, the format must seem confining, but on the dance floor or in the bedroom—Summer's main spheres of influence—this kind of creative foreplay is so rich in nuance and texture that other considerations are swept aside. (RS 231)

VINCE ALETTI