Piosenki (“Songs”) is an attempt to reflect the varied and beautiful snapshots of childhood found in the poems of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim. Tuwim’s children’s poems range from simple “playground rhymes” like “Dwa Michaly” (“Two Michaels”), in which two dancing boys chase each other in circles, and “Idzie Grze?” (“Grzes Walks Along”) through to the poetic sophistry of “Dwa Wiatry” (“Two Winds”) and “Mróz” (“Frost”), about a peasant boy on his sleigh, the very words of which—“Chrz est i brz ek, zgrzyt i st ek”—imitate the sound of the crunching, rattling sleigh.

I decided to give the children themselves a voice by including four well-known Polish playground chants (“wyliczanki”): “Pani Zosia” (“Mrs. Zosia”), a mean-spirited chant about Mrs. Zosia’s ever-drinking husband; “S´mierdziel” (“Smelly”), a verse about a smelly boy who angrily accuses everyone else of being smelly; “Siedzi Baba na Cmentarzu” (“Granny in the Cemetary”); and “Stary Kowal” (“This Old Cobbler”).

In “Rok i Bieda” (“The Year and Misery”), the poet admits reluctantly that each of the four miseries in the world—spring, summer, autumn, and winter—has its positive points, like sweet blueberries growing in the summer frost. And finally, there is “Trumf Trumf,” a nonsensical chant.

While preparing the piece, I spoke to Tuwim’s daughter, Ewa, who now runs his estate, and I sent her the recordings from the November workshops. I was delighted with her reply: “I am happy that my father’s poems will be performed with beautiful music in New York, where he lived during the war and where his work was then known only among Polish emigrants.”