The Royal Castle in Warsaw
Christmas carols with MACV
Arrangements and musical composition | Krzysztof Herdzin
Gabriela Legun | soprano
Natalia Rubiś | soprano
Krystian Adam Krzeszowiak | tenor
Period Instrument Orchestra Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviensej
Musicae Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense (MACV)
Conductor | Krzysztof Herdzin
Polish carols and pastorals seem to me to be the most beautiful in the world. In the USA, entertaining Christmas Songs reign supreme, in other European countries, folk pastorals are performed in the Christmas tradition, as well as popular compositions: Adeste Fideles, Joy to The World, Deck The Halls, O Tannenbaum, or the most famous Silent Night, created in Austria. And yet it is precisely the Polish tales of the Holy Family, some lyrical and melancholic, others solemn and full of pathos, still others facetious and humorous – they are a special treasure of our culture and tradition, shining against the background of other, Christmas proposals from around the world. Wonderful harmonies, catchy melodies, plenty of contrasts, among which highland music, polonaises, mazurs, marches, lullabies appear side by side – they are an extremely grateful material for creative composers and arrangers to develop.
There is probably no musical style that has not appeared among the arrangements of our carols and pastorals. For several decades, more and more original versions have appeared every year, showing these beautiful pieces in a completely new light. There are carols in folk, jazz, rock, pop, reggae, wonderfully written for huge symphonic ensembles in the idiom of classical music, and even contemporary music (the excellent, although very refined and reharmonized carols of Witold Lutosławski).
When preparing carols for the MACV orchestra, I set myself a goal that turned out to be a great challenge for me. Intriguing, inspiring and very satisfying. I decided to base each piece on a well-known and recognizable piece from the Baroque and Classical periods. The Early Instrument Orchestra has the characteristic of feeling comfortable in a specific convention. It is a lower tuning (430 Hz), different instruments, different articulation, different rhythm and a specific interpretation, consistent with the canon from several hundred years ago. I spent hundreds of hours listening to the music of Purcell, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Mozart, to find among these brilliant compositions fragments that “fit” the harmony and rhythm of the carols I selected. When deciding to use the music of the greatest composers from history, I tried to naturally combine it with Christmas pieces from a completely different world. Sometimes I based it on harmonic progression, other times on a characteristic melody or an unusual orchestral texture. As a result, I created 12 arrangements of carols, where each becomes a variation on the theme of a composition from centuries ago. This allowed us to create a sound shape that was extremely natural for the baroque orchestra, allowing it to remain in its own world, but on the other hand surprising with stylistic elements completely alien to those times, such as extended harmony, solutions typical of film music. It is impossible not to mention the soloists, who demonstrated truly incredible imagination and vocal artistry, finding their place in this completely new musical world, unprecedented in the Polish tradition of singing carols. Gabriela Legun and Andrzej Lampert gave these pieces a completely new dimension, creating new, surprising interpretations.
By giving you this unusual version of carols, I hope that you will find in them everything that is most beautiful in music. True emotions and truth.
Krzysztof Herdzin
https://vod.tvp.pl/programy,88/koncerty-swiateczne-odcinki,275753/odcinek-87,S03E87,1004695