Boston Camerata makes holiday classics sound new

Joel Cohen, the Camerata’s former music director, assembled the program out of carols, hymns, and songs from the late-18th and 19th centuries, mostly from the Northeast. The forms are simple, the harmonies built of stark, primal fourths and fifths. Cohen arranged the songs to form a tripartite narrative: from the world of sin to preparation for the Messiah to the nativity story. Sequences of text — St. Augustine, the Bible — are interwoven to guide the story along.

Are these art songs or folk songs? It was hard to tell, and in the end it didn’t much matter. What mattered was how direct and forceful an impression was made by the music, stripped to its essentials as it was. And there was surprising diversity in the selections: “The midnight cry’’ was a complex hymn, “The heavenly courtier’’ a long ballad for bass soloist, “Pretty home’’ a proto country-western song that wouldn’t have been out of place on the soundtrack of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?’’

Even straightforward music needs excellent performers, though, and this incarnation of the Camerata was superb to a person. There were six singers: sopranos Jane Sheldon and Anne Azéma, the current music director; alto Deborah Rentz-Moore; tenor Daniel Hershey; baritone Donald Wilkinson; and bass Joel Frederiksen, who also played guitar. So did Cohen, and he was joined by flutist Jesse Lepkoff and violinist Ben Powell. Even the audience played a role, singing along (at the Camerata’s invitation) to familiar numbers.

Listening to this wonderful music, images of worshipers at small, snow-covered churches come to mind, and it’s tempting to think that those generations had a more honest connection to Christmas that our convoluted times have irretrievably lost.

Such nostalgia is probably untenable — not to say dangerous — but there’s no doubt that the Camerata’s sweet, soulful evening added a richer dimension to the season. It is difficult to imagine a finer Christmas gift.

David Weininger can be reached at globeclassicalnotes@gmail.com.