Lutosławski - Twenty Polish Christmas Carols (1946, 1989)
In the mid 40s, Lutosławski was asked by the director of Polish music publishing to set a collection of Christmas carols to music. He wrote them for soprano and piano, and decades later he revisited them and orchestrated them. They come out to be lovely songs, the folk-like tunes paired with colorful orchestration. There are the slower, beautiful chorals, there are the loud and joyous ones, there are the very quick fun ones, and there are melancholic ones. Everything you expect from Christmas carols. Lutosławski had to take on this ‘safer’ project with more conventional harmonies because the political climate was not supportive of avant garde music. I keep running into stories of Polish composers who had to work around the censorship of an oppressive government, and am interested in how they often turn to sacred music and subjects for musical sanctuary.
The Carols:
- The Angles came to the Shepherds
- Hey, We Look Forward now on
- When Christ has Come to Us
- Just after Midnight
- God is Born
- Our Lady
- Hurrying to Bethlehem
- Lying in the Manger
- Jesus is There
- We are Shepherds
- Sleep, Jesus
- On this Day
- Jesus, Lovely Flower
- Hey la, Hey la, Shepherds, There You
- What to Do with this Child
- Hey, Hey, Lovely Lady Mary
- This is God’s Birthday
- Shepherds, What have You Seen?
- Infant, so Tiny
- Holy Mother Mary