When the Bach Passions
were re-discovered in the 19th
century, performances were shoe-horned
into the then current oratorio tradition
stemming from large-scale Handel performances.
That this type of performance can be
made to work is a tribute to Bach’s
genius and the scale on which he chose
to explore his ideas. Where a contemporary
such as Telemann wrote around a dozen
Matthew Passions, Bach chose to concentrate
all of his ideas into one complex, large-scale
work. But the sheer scale of the work
has, until relatively recently, blinded
us to Bach’s original performance practices.
For the past fifty
years we have been gradually re-discovering
performance practice in Baroque works.
In the case of Handelian oratorio, our
knowledge is helped by the survival
of detailed information about some of
his performances, notably the Foundling
Hospital Messiahs. There has
been an understandable tendency to project
the sort of forces used by Handel onto
Bach’s Passions. But we now have come
to accept that Bach’s forces for his
Passions were remarkably small. In his
recent recording, Paul McCreesh has
shown how well the piece works when
sung by just eight singers. The resulting
performance completely re-adjusts the
balances between recitative, chorale,
chorus and aria in the work.
But such performances
practices require special conditions;
they are not for every day. So for their
performance of the St. Matthew Passion
the choir of King’s College Cambridge
and the Brandenburg Consort under conductor
Stephen Cleobury use choral and orchestral
forces of a size that would have been
familiar to Handel and which Bach could
only have dreamed off. Even though the
Brandenburg Consort play on original
instruments, we must understand that
this is an entirely modern performance.
There can be no creative dialogue of
the sort that happens when such a group
might perform Messiah using forces which
matched Handel’s own.
A big reason for considering
this recording is the singing of the
choir; from the very opening they make
a stunning sound, controlled, shapely
yet rich and with the familiar King’s
timbre. Cleobury encourages the Brandenburg
Consort to underpin them with wonderfully
sprung rhythms. Only as the work developed
did I start wishing for a greater sense
of engagement, a more vivid projection
of the words, a feeling that the choir
were participants in the drama. In many
ways, this is quite an old-fashioned
performance. There is a very distinct
divide between recitative and choral
numbers, so the choir needs to work
additionally hard to keep up the dramatic
momentum, and this is something that
does not always happen. Things do improve
as the drama progresses; the chorus
deliver some of the more dramatic turbae
with verve and commitment and there
are times when the performance does
coalesce.
Rogers Covey-Crump
makes an admirable Evangelist. His has
the freedom and tone for this role;
his care and attention to the words
pays off ample dividends. But I have
heard him in better voice with more
of a feeling of freedom. As Jesus, Michael
George is certainly passionate, but
his extremely grainy voice became wearing.
Emma Kirkby is simply
stunning as the soprano soloist, her
tone cool but shapely and she is an
object lesson in how to generate involvement
with the drama of the words. Michael
Chance is similarly impressive, but
there were moments when I felt that
he was a little pressed at the top of
his voice. Still, he is a committed
and passionate performer and his duetting
with Kirkby has magical moments. The
tenor soloist, Martyn Hill, is frankly
a disappointment. I still treasure his
disc of Reynaldo Hahn songs, but on
this showing his voice has not weathered
well even though he is a highly musical
performer. David Thomas is the bass
soloist, giving his usual vivid performance.
This performance, given
by a team of highly musical performers,
has some magical moments and would make
a good introduction to the St. Matthew
Passion. But ultimately, the sum was
not greater than the parts; it did not
move me in the way that a passion performance
should.
For the St. John Passion
Cleobury, King’s College Cambridge Choir
and the Brandenburg Consort are joined
by a different group of soloists. From
the opening chorus, the choir seem to
be rather more engaged, more present.
There is no slip in musicianship, just
a feeling that they are part of the
drama. It helps, perhaps, that John
Mark Ainsley makes a rather more dramatic
Evangelist than Covey Crump in the St.
Matthew Passion. Ainsley sacrifices
something of Crump’s control and mellifluousness,
replacing them with a more impassioned
reading. He risks making the vocal line
uneven for the sake of the drama.
The soprano soloist
is Catherine Bott; she has similar musical
virtues to Emma Kirkby but I found Bott’s
voice had a pleasing warmth to it. I
found her the more involving singing.
Michael Chance again is the alto solo
and is on fine form. For the tenor solos,
Paul Agnew cannot be bettered, giving
us dramatic involvement combined with
his familiar pliable tone. Stephen Richardson
has a fine, dark lyric voice and he
lends Jesus’s music the dignity and
sense of line that it needs. Stephen
Varcoe is similarly pleasing in the
bass solos.
Like the St. Matthew
Passion, this is a highly musical performance;
rhythms are always sprung and dance
is not far away. I found the performance
had greater dramatic presence than the
St. Matthew Passion. Whilst it did not
quite move me, it is a performance that
I would treasure and return to.
The set is completed
by two curiosities, a St. Mark Passion
and a St. Luke Passion. It is known
that Bach wrote at least five passions
(at least this is what is stated in
his obituary which was co-written by
his son C.P.E. Bach). Nowadays, it is
generally assumed that one of these
is a single chorus version of the St.
Matthew Passion. We have the text of
the St. Mark Passion, but frustratingly
there is not a scrap of music surviving
in manuscript, so what we have here
is a reconstruction by Dr. Simon Heighes
based on the knowledge (perhaps more
accurately, the assumption) that the
St. Mark Passion was a parody work,
using movements from other works. This
was a procedure Bach used in other places.
Heighes has exercised some ingenuity
in assigning the Bach movements (mainly
from the Trauer Ode BWV 198 and the
cantata Widerstehe doc der Sünde).
But, in the absence of any recitative
he has used that for Reinhard Keiser’s
St. Mark Passion, making up any gaps
himself.
So what we have is
recitative by Reinhard Keiser with arias
and choruses selected and adapted by
Heighes from existing music; not exactly
Bach’s St. Mark Passion and perhaps
only a pale shadow of the work. Still,
it does receive a fine performance from
the Finnish choir, The Ring Ensemble,
and the European Baroque Orchestra.
Three of the soloists are associated
with the Hilliard Ensemble; Rogers Covey
Crump, the fine evangelist, Gordon Jones
whose Jesus sings almost exclusively
in string accompanied arioso, but the
part lies a little low for Jones, and
David James, the alto soloist, who is
stylish but very mannered. The solo
line up is completed by the boy treble,
Connor Burrowes, who copes well with
the solo demands of the arias and tenor
Paul Agnew who sings his one aria with
magnificent style.
There are other reconstructions,
Ton Koopman has provided his own for
his recording by the Amsterdam Baroque
Orchestra. But here, Roy Goodman and
his forces give Heighes’s edition a
fine performance, even though for me
it will remain just a curiosity.
Finally we come to
the St. Luke Passion, which exists in
Bach’s hand but there is some disagreement
as to whether it is by Bach or by someone
else. Bach wrote out other people’s
music for use in his Leipzig church;
his manuscript of Handel’s Brockes Passion
is one of the work’s important early
sources.
This St. Luke Passion
is a charming, rather old fashioned
sort of work, completely different in
atmosphere to Bach’s fully attributed
passions. It is just a sequence of recitatives
alternating with chorales; no accompanied
recitatives or large scale choruses.
There are just five arias and one trio
compared to thirty chorales and a dozen
choruses.
The passion is interesting
mainly in relation to the background
it can shed on Bach’s passions, but
in conductor Gerhard Rehm’s performance,
it lacks charm and has a tendency to
dourness. Taken at slow speeds, Georg
Jelden makes rather heavy weather of
the recitatives. Generally the performers
acquit themselves creditably, but I
did not think that they bring out the
best in the work. As the notes give
no hint of the doubt surrounding the
attribution, the unwary listener may
be fooled into thinking they are listening
to a work securely attributed to Bach.
This boxed set is perfect
for those people wishing to get to know
Bach’s Passions. Cleobury’s performances
of the St. Matthew and the St. John
are good steady musical performances.
Many people will be attracted to this
disc by the name of King’s College Choir
and they will not be disappointed, even
if the performances do not really make
a first choice for the library shelves.
Robert Hugill
BRILLIANT CLASSICS 99369 [9 CDs: 67.14 + 40.52
+ 52.56 + 72.58 + 65.14 + 53.50 + 47.11 + 58.26
+ 59.18] 
