This is the last of four CDs on Dacapo by Ars Nova Copenhagen
under Paul Hillier devoted to the 'narrative' choral works of
Heinrich Schütz. Previous volumes were reviewed here
and here.
Schütz's setting of St Matthew - or to give it his full
title, Das Leiden unsers Herren Jesu Christi, wie es beschreibet
der heilige Evangeliste Matthaeus - is never going to have
the same broad appeal as Bach's. For all his Lutheranism, Bach's
music, partly as a product of his times, was much less austere
than that of Schütz. With this Passion, Schütz's
music becomes almost monastic in its self-discipline: the only
polyphony - musical 'excitement', as it were - comes from the
occasional, but frequently powerful interjections by various
grouped parts. One can hear this, in particular, in the Multitude
and the Jews in later sections, and the 'congregation' in the
poignant Kyrie eleison right at the very conclusion.
By contrast, both the Evangelist's and especially Christ's parts
are almost ascetic - pared down to discreetly inflected, sober
recitative. Moreover, because so much of the music in the Passion
is sung by these two roles, the extent to which anyone enjoys
any given performance is likely to depend a great deal on one's
opinion of the voices of Jesus and the Evangelist. In this recording,
that means English tenor Julian Podger as the latter and Danish
bass Jacob Bloch Jespersen as Jesus. There is always an element
of risk in assigning key roles to non-native speakers of the
language of a text, but it is hard to imagine any objections
to Podger, whose clear, expressive voice should please all agnostics,
and whose German upbringing has given him a faultless accent.
But Jespersen is another matter: in longer passages - of which
there are many - his voice has just a little of the quality
of someone with a head cold, and his Jesus can come across as
a trifle dour. Furthermore, his German pronunciation, though
certainly very good, does contain a few slips which give Jesus
a bit of a foreign accent at times - perhaps enough of one to
grate mildly on German speakers.
At one point Jespersen's mispronunciation makes a grammatical
error: where he sings "Stehet auf, lass uns gehen" - plural
command form followed by singular - instead of "Stehet auf,
lasst uns gehen" halfway through Track 3. There are a few minor
typing errors anyway in both languages of the text of the Gospel
- thoughtfully included in the booklet - as well as some inconsequential
differences between the German text as published and the one
used by the singers. In Track 3, Jesus sings: "Mein Vater, ist
es nicht möglich ...", but the 'nicht' is not present in
the text.
The CD booklet is otherwise excellent. Apart from the full text,
there are two fine essays on the music and detailed biographies
of performers - 34 pages of print in total.
The recording is almost superb - the nowadays ubiquitous rumble
of road traffic only occasionally and very faintly intrudes
upon the beautiful voices of Ars Nova Copenhagen floating in
the lovely acoustic of the Garnison Church.
Byzantion
Collected reviews and contact at reviews.gramma.co.uk
Julian Podger (tenor) 
