Paul Guinery introduces a seasonal sequence of motets and choral cantatas by Francis Poulenc. In 1938, two years after his return to the Catholicism of his youth, he began his powerful Penitential Motets. During the Second World War there followed his masterpiece Figure Humaine (1943) and Un Soir de Neige (1944), also to a text by Paul Eluard. The programme ends with two motet cycles from the 1950s: Laudes de Saint
Antoine de Padoue and Quatre Motets pour le
Temps de Noel. Stephen Layton conducts the BBC Singers.