‘Wow! ‘ - said one of
this evening’s participants when, nearly a
year ago, I referred to the other singers
scheduled for this event – ‘… that is going
to be one hot concert!’ So it proved, but
not in the sense he had meant: the heat was
decidedly of the ‘under the collar’ kind,
since not only the conductor but also two
of the major singers had to drop out: not
only this, but one of their replacements also
had to withdraw, thus leaving the plucky but
unfortunate Bass who had been expecting to
sing just the small parts of High Priest /
Pilate and Judas, to carry the burden of the
Bass arias and all the Bass roles. Just to
make things really nail-biting, he, too, was
ill and had to leave the platform in mid-aria,
the Alto soloist was clearly not as familiar
with the part as might be ideal, and the Tenor
soloist was far from being in his best voice….
this left the Evangelist to carry the day,
which he did.
The combination of Matthias
Goerne as Christus, Ainsley as Evangelist
and René Pape as bass soloist was perhaps
too glorious to happen: certainly, there is
no single recording which can match such a
happy choice, so the sense of frustration
at a less than ideal performance is hardly
a new one. This work might not be seen as
comfortable territory for the LSO, although
the evening’s conductor, Harry Christophers,
certainly has plenty of solid Bach experience,
and the orchestra acquitted itself well without
ever showing that special quality which of
late has so distinguished the LSO Mahler and
Stravinsky, in particular – but how could
anyone hope to shine given that so many disasters
had occurred, and were occurring, around them?
There was certainly some wonderful solo work,
most especially by the flutes, the continuo
‘cellos and the co-leader’s accompanying of
‘Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder’ and whilst
the strings did not quite have that golden
tone needed at the music surrounding Christus’
arioso passages they did provide a much-needed
reliable background for the singing.
It would be unfair to
compare Stephen Roberts to Matthias Goerne,
especially on the basis of a short-notice
replacement, and in fact Roberts gave us a
very genuine, forthright Christus, quite youthful
in tone if not demeanour, and his diction
was eminently clear – his best moments came
in the recitative rather than arioso, with
lines such as ‘…dass erfüllet wurden
die Schriften der Propheten’ being declaimed
with ringing confidence. It is confidence
which especially delineates Ainsley’s Evangelist,
and he needed every bit of it here: this is
of course the part which binds the work, but
the singer does not often have to provide
a comforting sense of stability in the face
of minor dramas all around him: he took it
all nobly, so much so that just after the
‘fall’ of yet another soloist, he remained
unperturbed when the organist seemed to want
to guide him into the wrong recitative. Strolling
up to that music stand must have felt at times
like going to the scaffold, but his beautiful
tone, unerring sense of pacing, aptly judged
drama and simply moving interpretation remained
as close to the ideal Evangelist as ever,
with his crispness, his ‘bounce’ in the tone
at ‘Sie sprachen aber’ being as noteworthy
as his incomparable pathos at the narrative
of Peter’s denial – no other Evangelist around
today makes more of phrases like ‘krähete’
and ‘weinete bitterlich’ or makes you feel
more involved in the narrative.
The Dutch
singer Bas Ramselaar had probably been expecting
to introduce his beautiful bass-baritone voice
to a large London audience with the ideal
vehicle of the smaller Bass roles, but in
the event he had to carry the lot, and did
so in a manner which one can only call near-heroic.
It was clear from ‘Gerne will ich mich bequemen’
that his legato line either needed some work
or was affected by indisposition, but what
was also obvious was that this is a singer
for whom words really do mean something, and
his performance of the lines ‘Weil es dem
lieben Gott gefällt’ and ‘Durch den ersten
Trunk versüsset’ whilst not musically
perfect was finely nuanced in the verbal sense.
His indisposition worsened as the evening
progressed and he finally had to leave the
platform halfway through ‘Komm, süsses
Kreuz,’ with Christophers saving the situation
by quietly singing the final bars in his place.
The ensuing minutes
were fascinating for all concerned, especially
the audience: it was clear that uppermost
in all minds was, what’s going to happen with
the ‘killer’ Bass recitative and aria, ‘Am
Abend’ and ‘Mache dich, mein Herze, rein’
– not to mention ‘Nun ist der Herr…’? since
the Christus had already, quite understandably,
indicated that he wasn’t prepared to take
over. I had visions of the cry ‘Is there a
Bass in the house?’ being heard (in fact I
had seen Jonathan Lemalu at the interval and
wondered if he might step up…) – meanwhile
the thoughts ‘Oh s***, how low is ‘begraben?’
Too bloody low….’ were written on Ainsley’s
face almost as clearly as if they’d been projected
there….in the event, Ramselaar valiantly returned,
much to the relief of all, and performed the
music with all the commitment and fervour
at his disposal: he even managed to sing quite
movingly at ‘o köstlich’s Angedenken!’
What a brick, as they used to say at school…
Angelika Kirchschlager
was the other big ‘draw’ as far as I was concerned,
although I still have reservations about her
Bach singing: in the event, her lovely tone,
absolute seriousness of purpose and truly
noble phrasing compensated for a certain feeling
of lack of intimacy with the music, and she
sang ‘Ach, Golgotha’ most movingly. The soprano
Malin Hartelius improved as the evening progressed:
after her first aria I felt that the most
suitable music for her to sing would be ‘L’ho
perduta, me meschina!’ but she gave an affecting
account of ‘Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben.’
Kenneth Tarver did what he could with the
tenor arias but he was clearly not at his
best.
The London Symphony
Chorus and Finchley Children’s music group
made up a very large body of singers, trained
by Joseph Cullen to provide a highly dramatic,
often very contrasting interpretation: Christophers
too seemed to encourage a very high proportion
of variations in dynamics throughout the evening,
especially at moments such as ‘Ich bin’s,
Ich sollte büssen’ although the huge
sound was admirably scaled down for a quietly
intimate ‘Du edles Angesichte.’ Not exactly
an evening to treasure, then – more one to
recover from, although the authoritative Evangelist
offered much consolation, as is right from
one who relates the words of the Disciple.
Melanie Eskenazi
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