With the completion of his Symphony No. 1 (1973), Krzysztof Penderecki began to feel that he had exhausted the avant-garde vein he had mined for the previous 20 years. A very different, post-romantic (or perhaps more properly neo-romantic) style began to emerge in The Awakening of Jacob (1974) and was fully apparent in the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1976) and the opera Paradise Lost (1978). The Symphony No. 2, written over the years 1979 and 1980, likewise illustrates the stylistic leap the composer had made.

Penderecki has said of his work: "The Second Symphony (Christmas Eve), finished seven years later [than the Symphony No. 1], referred fully to the late-nineteenth-century symphonic tradition—Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler, Sibelius, and Shostakovich—filtered through the sensibility and means of expression of a composer who had experienced the avant-garde." Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic commissioned the symphony and gave its first performance at New York's Avery Fisher Hall, on May 1, 1980.

Despite their very different sound worlds, the first two of Penderecki's symphonies are alike in design; both are in a symmetrical arch form that evolves over the course of about 30 minutes. Contrary to the joyful implications of the work's subtitle, the Christmas Symphony is an almost unrelentingly dark work. As a Christian, Penderecki has spoken often of the importance for him of the Christmas celebration. However, the only musical allusion to Christmas comes in the form of three brief quotations of the famous carol "Stille Nacht" (Silent Night)—quotations which come as a surprise, since they don't really fit into the musical fabric which surrounds them. The other themes are accessible and melodic, if dissonant at times.

The tempo is slow and the tone mournful through the work's first several minutes. Later, the music speeds up with scurrying strings and brass outbursts, building to a militaristic climax á la Shostakovich. Then the tempo slows again and the work closes quietly and mysteriously.

© All Music Guide