Showing posts with label St Matthew Passion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St Matthew Passion. Show all posts

Sunday, September 07, 2014

St Matthew and St Mark?

It was one of the hottest tickets in town yesterday: the semi-staged performance at the Proms of the Bach St Matthew Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle conducting, direction by Peter Sellars. Add to this the Berlin Radio Choir, singing from memory, an all-star cast and a packed Albert Hall that was ready for anything...

Well, almost anything. We were not quite ready for the utterly devastating performance that Mark Padmore gave as the Evangelist. In Sellars' concept - sometimes convincing, sometimes less so - the Evangelist carries everything, experiencing the emotions and traumas of each character, supporting them, leading them, suffering in their place. Christ - the astounding Christian Gerhaher - is a distant figure, seated above the orchestra and outside the action through the first half, then entirely off stage for his scant few phrases in the second. The Evangelist lives the drama and is its focal point. The beauty, nuancing, clarity and stillness of Padmore's voice would have been enough to carry the night on its own, but his every move magnetised us and convinced us that he felt every anguish, every burden and every lash. If the British music business had not already given him a virtual sainthood by repute, they certainly should now. (Gerhaher, of course, is just as magical, but has frustratingly little to sing.)

The staging has its ups and downs, many of them literal. A lot of rushing around is involved and sometimes one wished they'd keep still for a few minutes. Yet some extraordinary images unfolded that also enhanced the music at a profound level, notably through the interaction of the instrumental soloists with the singers, moments that carried a plethora of meanings. Sometimes the players seemed to represent the soul, the conscience or the better self; perhaps even God, or Bach in place of God? Magdalena Kozena sang 'Erbarme dich' kneeling at the feet of her violinist; Camilla Tilling in 'Aus liebe will mein Heiland sterben' stood in close quartet with her oboists and flautist; Emmanuel Pahud, no less, beside her right shoulder. Tenor Topi Lehtipuu stretched up towards an unattainable oboist in the organ inset; bass Eric Owens appeared to pray for mercy before a vengeful virtuoso fiddler. 

Rattle's tempi were largely very brisk, sometimes too much so - occasionally I longed for an old-school influence to bring back a little more time for breath, contemplation and refulgence, since some of the intricate instrumental writing whooshed by to somewhat unsettling effect. But the magic was there all the same and the moments of stillness stood out all the better. The episode that brings the whole work together is (I feel) the final bass aria, 'Mache dich mein Herze rein' - here he understands, accepts and transcends all that has gone before. If that doesn't do its job, nothing does. It worked. 

My personal frustration with the staging is mostly due to the sonic impact, as it entails much clonking about and some directional echoes which are the fault of the RAH's acoustic, not the performers. Still, there's much to chew over: the presence, or lack of it, of Jesus himself (we might ask: is he real?), those intimate dialogues between singers and instrumentalists, that soul-searing performance by Padmore. 

Would less be more? We can feel the suffering in the music; we don't need to see it. The spiritual catharsis of this work, like Parsifal's, is perhaps better internalised if there is not too much to observe and assess: that process puts us outside ourselves, switches on our objective brain and mutes the intuitive, emotional plane that's necessary for the full cumulative effect to reach us. (Btw, I am not religious in any way, shape or form; yet perhaps that makes the spiritual dimensions of Bach and Wagner all the more meaningful.)

What seemed at the time a long, hot evening now haunts for its ineffable beauty, its deeply human quest for meaning and its all-consuming, tour-de-force performances. 

In the foyer I spotted the head of the LSO, who may or may not have been clutching a metaphorical butterfly net. 

Friday, April 18, 2014

"Mache dich..."

Pick an occasion - any occasion - in the history of music at which you'd have liked to be present... Today I'll choose the Bach St Matthew Passion as conducted in 1829 by the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. The performance was organised by the young composer and his actor friend Eduard Devrient and the work enjoyed probably its first outing since the death of Bach himself, some 80 years earlier.

Apparently they only used about half of it, and Mendelssohn made plenty of changes to the harmonies, orchestration and vocal lines - but it still had the required effect. Goethe, hearing of the occasion, sensed its significance, saying: "It's as if I heard the roaring of the sea from afar."

Mendelssohn's aunt, a friend of CPE Bach's wife, a pupil of WF Bach and hostess of one of Berlin's finest artistic salons, had a number of Bach's manuscripts in her possession, including the St Matthew Passion. She presented it to her gifted nephew when he was 16 and consequently changed the course of history. Imagine a new world hearing it - even half of it - for the first time. "To think that it took an actor and a Jew's son to revive the greatest Christian music for the world!" Mendelssohn remarked.

Mendelssohn, born into a Jewish family, raised as a Lutheran after his parents' conversion, and a practising Christian for the rest of his life, saw no need for a conflict between his background and his faith. He achieved a unique point of balance that allowed him to embrace both - despite the widespread atmosphere of low-level anti-Semitism around him (I'm sorry to see that even Clara Schumann made snide remarks behind his back). In the bicentenary year, 2009, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies once remarked that he regarded Mendelssohn as "the prophet of light". I'm with him on that.

As for Bach, he takes us into another world. The St Matthew Passion makes us live the story and its processes as if from the inside. It offers music that cleanses the soul; even if you approach it as drama rather than religion, it doesn't seem to mind and will still work its wonders. It offers, too, an oasis of calm, reflection and redemption, along with a massive dramatic catharsis that might be felt especially keenly by anyone who has lived through the loss of a loved one. When my mother died, 20 years ago, I could listen to nothing else for months.

Here is the last aria of the St Matthew Passion, "Mache dich mien Herze rein". It's a marvel in its own right, heard alone; but at the end of the whole it arrives as a purifying sunrise after three hours (or so) of anguish, soul-searching and tragedy. It's sung here by the great baritone Thomas Quasthoff. Have a good Easter, all.