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.
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