It's odd - for a holiday that people most associate with classical music, Christmastime radio programming features very little classical music written about Christmas, opting instead to showcase hour after hour of good-to-middling arrangements of the same dang carols we hear every year. I've actually made a point of tracking down interesting classical pieces written about Christmas to curtail this very problem, and this year I'm doing my own "12 Days of Christmas" schtick to show the best of them off. First up - a much-belated visit to the world of one of my favorite composers, Edvard Grieg.
While Grieg's piano and orchestral pieces get a lot of play (and in the case of his Piano Concerto way too much play, if you ask me) his songs are largely neglected, mostly due to vocalists' unease in singing in Norwegian despite Norwegian pronunciation not being all that dissimilar from most other Northern European languages. There are some recordings of his lovely song cycle Haugtussa by the likes of Anne Sofie von Otter, however, and hopefully this appropriately soporific gem will trickle into Winter concerts eventually. Going to sleep is a big part of the ritual of Christmas for many children, and so this Christmas Lullaby is a welcome, non-Santa variation on the theme, featuring subterranean rocking in the bass and surprising harmonic subtlety in the right hand and melody, reminding us once again how well Grieg's music has aged since his death over a hundred years ago. The melody chromatically tiptoeing down the stairs in the vocal part is straight out of Debussy's Beau Soir, but the unexpected shift to G minor is pure Grieg, deftly tiptoeing back into D major in the bass. And hey - Anne Sofie von Otter sang it!
~PNK
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