Before television or radio, the piano was the focal point of the home. Holiday recordings such as Jacqueline Schwab's DOWN CAME AN ANGEL evoke the spirit of days gone by.
Best known for her solo piano soundtracks to Ken Burns's PBS documentaries, Schwab has a quaint, inviting touch on the keyboard and a wonderful appreciation of Appalachian musical tradition. The result is a warm, familiar Christmas sound filled with nostalgia. Schwab's piano shimmers with a delightful tone, like a parlor with a fireplace on a snowy day.
Though the album is entirely instrumental, the traditional hymns, carols, and spirituals were meant to be sung. To that end, the producers have included lyric sheets, giving families the opportunity to gather around the piano once again to experience a Christmas tradition.

Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1890, damned with the faintest of praise by the Tsar, who remarked that it was "very nice". The composer himself expressed dissatisfaction with his music for The Nutcracker, a subject proposed by Marius Petipa and the Imperial Theatre Directorate in 1891 and first performed at the Maryinsky in December, 1892, again to a cool reception. The music itself, however, had already proved popular enough in a suite arranged by Tchaikovsky for a concert earlier in the year. The story of the ballet is drawn from E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale, Der Nussknacker und der Mäuserkönig. Set in the eighteenth century, initially in the house of the President of one of the German states of the period, the ballet opens with a children's Christmas party, at which Drosselmeyer, a slightly sinister adult, brings presents, a doll for Clara, the daughter of the house, and a toy soldier for Franz, her brother. When the children are told not to open their presents, Drosselmeyer quietens them by giving the two a pair of nutcrackers, promptly broken by Franz who tries to crack the biggest nut he can find. The Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava), the oldest symphonic ensemble in Slovakia, was founded in 1929. The orchestra's first conductor was František Dyk and over the past sixty years it has worked under the direction of several prominent Czech and Slovak conductors. The orchestra has made many recordings for the Naxas label ranging from the ballet music of Tchaikovsky to more modern works by composers such as Copland, Britten and Prokofiev. For Marco Polo the orchestra has recorded works by Glazunov, Glière, Rubinstein and other late romantic composers and film music of Honegger, Bliss, Ibert and Khachaturian. Ondrej Lenard was born in 1942 and had his early training in Bratislava, where, at the age of 17, he entered the Academy of Music and Drama, to study under Ludovit Rajter. His graduation concert in 1964 was given with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and during his two years of military service he conducted the Army Orchestral Ensemble, later renewing an earlier connection with the Slovak National Opera, where he has continued to direct performances.

Traditionally carols were not necessarily confined to the Christmas season, but were dance-songs. The dancers of Kölbigk, indeed, found themselves in difficulties with the Church, condemned by an angry priest to dance for a whole year, as a punishment for their neglect of religious duties, carolling at an inappropriate time in the churchyard. Nevertheless, even in the Middle Ages, there were carols specifically for Christmas, the season with which nowadays these songs are most closely associated. It has become the fashion to use very considerable technical and musical skill in the arrangement of essentially simple and popular music for the kind of sophisticated performance to be found in the major English choral foundations, and on these arrangements composers annually use much ingenuity and artifice. The Tewkesbury Abbey carols open with The first Nowell, in an arrangement by Sir David Willcocks, a musician well known for his long association with King's College, Cambridge, and it's choir, and with the London Bach Choir. The series continues with another David Willcocks arrangement, this time of an old Basque carol, with well known words by S. Baring-Gould, Gabriel's Message. Other fine arrangements by David Willcocks include a version of the popular While shepherds watched their flocks, from Thomas East's 1592 publication, The Whole Booke of Psalmes with their Wonted Tunes, as they are sung in Churches. The Polish carol Infant holy, infant lowly is included, with the fifteenth century French Franciscan processional Come, o come Emmanuel. Two other French carols arranged by David Willcocks are Angels from the realms of glory and Quelle est cette odeur agréable? (Whence is that goodly fragrance flowings?), the latter sung here in French. A final arrangement by David Willcocks in the present collection is of the traditional English watchman's song God rest ye merry, gentlemen.