Christmas Fantasy

Kaunas State Philharmonic invites everyone eagerly awaiting the most beautiful holidays of the year to hear three large-scale works that create a festive mood and encourage listeners to welcome Christmas with a pure heart and uplifted spirit. The Christmas Cantata by Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, composed in 1953, was his final work. In three sections, it tells the biblical story of Christmas. The first section depicts the turmoil in the world before the coming of the Messiah. The second combines melodies from well-known Christmas carols, such as “Joyful Silent Night,” “The Rose Has Bloomed,” and “He Is the Lovely Little Child.” The third is the solemn chorus “Praise the Lord,” which leads into an orchestral ending that reprises thematic material from the first section. The cantata’s texts are sung in Latin, German, and French.

The Fantasy on Christmas Carols by English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, which has not been performed in Lithuania until now, is a single-movement work composed in 1912. It is based on the English traditional Christmas carols “There Is a Fountain,” “Come All You Worthy Gentlemen,” and “On Christmas Night All Christians Sing,” which the composer and his friend Cecil Sharp collected and transcribed in southern England a few years before the Fantasy was written. The carol melodies intertwine with brief orchestral quotations from other Christmas songs, such as “The First Nowell.”

The Christmas Oratorio by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, which has remained popular for nearly 150 years, was first performed in 1858. It was written by the 23-year-old composer and dedicated to his composition student Clémence de Grandval. A devout Catholic, Saint-Saëns chose biblical texts for this ten-movement oratorio, in Latin, following the Vulgate version (Saint Jerome’s translation of the Bible, completed in 1450). Some of the texts belong to the proper of the Christmas feast’s “Missa in nocte” (Midnight Mass). After the account of Christ’s birth in the Gospel of Luke come psalm texts, verses from the prophetic books, and passages from the Gospel of John. With a few exceptions, the composition is predominantly lyrical and contemplative in mood, as the composer focused more on religious themes and reflection than on the human drama in the biblical texts. The work’s clear and sincere music never leaves listeners indifferent, and sends them from the concert hall with hearts uplifted.