Matthaüs-Passion
Barbican
‘God save us…it’s just as if one were at an opera!’ a woman is quoted as saying at a performance of Bach’s Matthaüs-Passion in the 18th century. If she meant that it is hard to imagine a more intensely dramatic experience — it is other kinds of experience, too, of course — then she was right. It was fashionable 40 years or so ago to say that the St Matthew Passion is less dramatic than the St John Passion, a view argued by Britten and his acolytes. I think they were wrong: the Matthaüs-Passion is at least as dramatic as its shorter twin, but it has other elements, too. The greater number of long arias in the Matthaüs-Passion means that we are encouraged to reflect on the events which are being depicted or evoked for us with incomparable vividness, while the Johannes-Passion sweeps us along but, in my view, gathers less dramatic momentum as it proceeds because we get less deeply involved with the action; in the Matthaüs-Passion we are made to realise at every point what hangs on the events, so that for the non- or anti-believer such as myself it is an overpowering and at the same time deeply disconcerting work. I know of no other in which Christian faith and the central events on which it is based are presented so movingly: how can one respond to it with the intensity which it compels without subscribing to the doctrines which it promulgates? And if one finds them not only incredible but repugnant, how is it that this work shakes one to the core as almost nothing else does?
This crisis which Bach’s masterpiece creates whenever it has an adequate performance was unavoidable at the Barbican on Palm Sunday. Seventy years ago Willem Mengelberg conducted it with such eviscerating power that his performance, which can be heard on record, still presents Bach’s vision with unequalled conviction. For many people the slow tempi and the incredible bar by bar fluctuations within them, not to mention the 1939 sound, will act as an efficient shield and they can enjoy the pleasures of contemporary skaters over the surface of the work. Riccardo Chailly, who was for years one of Mengelberg’s successors at the Concertgebouw, adopted, at the Barbican, an eclectic approach which made it, overall, the most impressive account I have been to for a very long time. He took the opening chorus, that massive and irresistible invitation to mourn Christ’s death, at a giddily fast tempo, about twice as quick as I’d have liked. The shattering momentum of that first of the four great musical pillars of the work comes from the ever more dense counterpoint, not from sprinting to the foot of the Cross. Thereafter tempi were measured but virtually never seemed too slow, though there is a patch of the Passion, shortly before the Crucifixion, where Bach does get bogged down, whatever the tempi. The Evangelist was Johannes Chum, expressive and urgent, but with a slightly schoolmasterly approach, and some head notes that suggested artfulness. But by his side was the Christus of Hanno Müller-Brachmann, far and away the most moving that I have ever heard, or for that matter seen. He lived through his ordeal and took us with him, singing with a natural expressiveness, using a voice of incredible beauty and evenness. To have him balanced by the sublime smoothness of Thomas Quasthoff’s bass-baritone soloist was a luxury which by the end had become an addictive necessity. Fortunately, this account is being recorded, and will set new standards.
It is odd to see the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with a scattering of period instruments, though on the whole the mixture worked well. Some of the solo woodwind playing was of a purity which, just as sound, brought tears to the eyes, let alone with the context and the angelic singing of Sibylla Rubens’s soprano and Marie-Claude Chappuis’s mezzo. And Maximilian Schmitt’s tenor was the right kind of contrast with Chum’s. Yet the most stirring feature of all, apart from Müller-Brachmann, was the all-male chorus of the St Thomas’s Boys Choir and the Tölz Boys Choir, producing, when required, masses of rich tone, but excellent too for the vicious interjections of the disciples and the Jews. If anything Chailly did somewhat play down the sheer element of malevolence in the crowd’s music, and the savage yell of ‘Barrabam!’ wasn’t shocking. I had the feeling, sometimes, that Chailly would like to defy contemporary orthodoxies about Bach’s unrelenting vigour, and let such moments as ‘Surely this was the Son of God’ expand as they did when Klemperer, Furtwängler, Mengelberg conducted them. Perhaps by the time the recording is made he will do, and then we shall be as close to a deep Matthaüs-Passion as we can at present hope to be.
Comments