Two Passions for Easter

It's difficult to look past Bach's two surviving large-scale Passions when it comes to Easter music. Two of the Passion oratorios he wrote have been lost - the St Mark and the St Luke - but two survive. The St John Passion (Johannespassion) was performed in various versions between 1724 & 1749; the St Matthew Passion (Matthäuspassion) with relatively fewer revisions between 1727 & 1746. The St John is shorter, more direct and driven; The St Matthew is more expansive and meditative, Bach employing a bewildering array of compositional styles. Both languished from shortly after the composer's death in 1750 until the Matthew Passion was famously revived - in abbreviated form - by Mendelssohn in 1829. From our privileged 21st-century vantage point, we have almost 70 years worth of recordings to pick and choose from.

As luck (or marketing) would have it, there are two outstanding recordings, one of each Passion, which have been released this March. One old and one new, either - or both! - would make a wonderful addition to anyone's collection of Easter music.

The first dates from 1971, just at the vanguard of the 'period performance' revolution that has dominated recordings of baroque music in the decades that followed. It is Nikolaus Harnoncourt & Hans Gillesberger's recording of the Johannespassion featuring only male singers and the first wave, really, of large-scale performance featuring only period instruments.

The soloists are excellent. The central pair of Evangelist and Christus are outstanding. Kurt Equiluz has complete control of the narrative and provides narrative impulse or pathos as the text dictates. Max van Egmond, Christus, has a voice which I've always found characterful, sensitive and well-suited to Bach's music. He's in great voice here and seems utterly in step with Equiluz. In my opinion if this central partnership is working then you've pretty much got a good performance. Van Egmond also sings the arioso 'Betrachte mein Seel', one of those tiny pieces of music that Bach seems to have stolen from heaven; and he sings it beautifully, for me even more movingly than in his wonderful later rendition for Sigiswald Kuijken. He is similarly distinguished in the later aria with the choir 'Mein teurer Heiland'. The boy soloists manage well to hold their own - even through the intricacies of 'Zerfließe, mine Herze' towards the end. This will be something that some listeners may find less than ideal, but it does, for me, add to the performance to hear a different instrument from an adult voice - and in this case the singing is good enough for it not to be a negative point.

The choir lives up to the star soloists. There is one moment in particular that has the capacity to make the hairs on your neck stand on end - the turba outburst of 'Kreuzige, kreuzige'. Here it is vicious and chilling: a true expression of human beings turned into a mob baying for vengeance. As William Carlos Williams described the crowd 'At The Ball Game' in carefully ambivalent terms:

It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
its words cut —

The flashy female with her
mother, gets it —

The Jew gets it straight - it
is deadly, terrifying —

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself

This is an important recording - but that importance shouldn't overshadow the fact that it is also a great recording, a deserved classic where everything is in the right place. It so impresses by its overall vision and stylistic consistency in pursuit of this vision, that it really doesn't seem appropriate to pick at individual moments. The tenor soloist Bert van t'Hoff, is occasionally a little liberal in his vibrato for me - although his biggest moment, the intensely felt aria 'Erwäge, wie sein blutgefarbenes Rücken', is carried off with some aplomb. On occasion there is a raggedness to some of the choral singing and the instruments - but this is a small price to pay for the edgey energy in the crowd scenes.

Recently released at a bargain price, this is essential listening for anyone interested in performances of Bach's Passions, both for historical interest and in terms of its extremely high standard.

The second CD brings us right up to date: a new release for 2008, the Dunedin Consort have followed up their highly-regarded CD performance of Handel's Messiah with a Matthäuspassion that I suspect will win them even more admirers.

The first thing to mention - to get out of the way really - is the size of the forces involved. John Butt is, like Paul McCreesh and Jos van Veldhoven to name two others, a conductor convinced by the researches of Joshua Rifkin and Andrew Parrott. Their study of the normal circumstances in which Bach's music was originally performed has led to the contention that the music was sung one voice to a part. The 'chorus' was simply the concerted forces of these soloists. This means that for the Matthew Passion the two choirs comprise a total of eight singers - reinforced by a single soprano in ripieno for the opening and closing choruses of part one. This is not to everyone's taste. The reviewer for Classics Today is not a fan - as can be seen by his review of the Dunedin Consort and his earlier response to Paul McCreesh's 2003 recording. I can't say I share his views - I don't have a problem with the contrast between soloist and choir and I enjoy the intimacy which this approach brings.

It's worth the attempt to adjust your perceptions of what the piece should be, because this is in very many ways an outstanding performance. The central pairing, Evangelist Nicholas Mulroy and Christus Matthew Brook, are excellent. They start well and if anything get better through the performance. There's no chance here of the second half dragging, which can be a feature of less accomplished performances. Alto Clare Wilkinson gives an outstanding performance in her arias - her Golgotha / Sehet, Jesus hat die Hand in the second part is one of the best I've heard. As the reviewer for Gramophone pointed out if there's a weakness it's in the soprano soloists - but this is relative to the recording's strengths (and to the many great sopranos who've sung the music) and for me wasn't a particularly significant drawback. Having said this, Susan Hamilton's 'Aus Liebe' is beautiful, expressing a rather moving fragility. Returning to the excellent Matthew Brook, his singing of the recitative and aria at the end (Am Abend da es kühle war & Mache dich, mein Herze, rein) is comparable to the very best.

Butt and the Dunedin Consort have entered a crowded field - although theirs is only the second recorded version sung one voice to a part. For all the good qualities of Paul McCreesh's earlier effort, I think they shade it in terms of the approach. The singers sound more connected to each other, more of an ensemble; the voices in McCreesh's version are mostly superior, but they do not knit together as impressively. These are very much first impressions, but it's a recording I'm looking forward to getting to know better each time I listen to it.

The quickest and easiest way to get hold of the Dunedin St Matthew is to visit Linn Records and download it. It comes in a variety of formats, from a very generous 320k MP3 right up to a 24-bit, better than CD quality, studio master FLAC. I went for the CD quality FLAC and it sounds beautiful. It's also available on CD via Amazon and the other usual places.