The opening chorus of Bach’s St John Passion is the greatest music of the 18th century. No arguments, except perhaps a plea for Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. But while Mozart depicts the events of a single crazy day, Bach speaks of eternal matters. Even before the chorus enters, the 18 bars of instrumental prelude tell of impending revelation. A steady thudding bass line supports driving semiquaver motion, while the pain of dissonant clashes from flutes and oboes presages tragedy. Even before the mighty shout of “Herr!” invokes our Lord, we are bystanders in Golgotha.
Or at least we usually are, especially when Laurence Cummings is directing the Academy of Ancient Music. But not this time, for far from the place of the skulls, we remained just an audience in Barbican Hall. Why the passage failed of its effect had something to do with balance, with subdued strings (depending perhaps in this venue on where your seat was), offering little of their accustomed surging troubled activity. But from the choral entry onwards, all was as it should be with Cummings’ superb direction.
As it was with his excellent choristers, who matched the splendour of this large opening structure with its paired pillar at the other end of the work, the closing “Ruht wohl” (Rest in peace) as consoling as the opening had been stirring. In between these 21 singers, five-to-a-part being luxury compared to Bach’s three-to-a-part in Leipzig in 1724, would surely have delighted the recently appointed Kantor himself, not least in the balance and fluency of their counterpoint.
The soloists too made a strong team, so that each of the eight solo arias, reflecting on events in the highly charged narrative, made its mark. Linking it all was the Evangelist of tenor Nicholas Mulroy, one of Europe’s finest singers of the role, on his best form, a man buttonholing us with his extraordinary, world-changing tale. All commentaries refer to this being done in recitative, which technically is correct. But when that recitative is so wide ranging and expressive, and is delivered with the pathos and meaning Mulroy brought to the text, it becomes something much more. The two tenor arias, in a piece of luxury casting, were taken with touching lyrical fervour by Ed Lyons, himself another of our most distinguished Evangelists. Jesus was the bass-baritone Dingle Yandell, suitably authoritative, and Pilate was Canadian bass Jonathan Brown, his fine singing making the Tetrarch sympathetic in his exchanges with the Evangelist and with Jesus.
Both female soloists were very fine also. Soprano Carolyn Sampson, for all the many times she has sung this work, still makes it sound fresh, while her voice retains all its allure. Helen Charlston, until 2023 a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, is now singing opera and Lieder internationally as well as concert music. Hers is a lovely alto sound, even throughout the range and in the middle and lower registers still gleams brightly, with no obvious ‘break’ and sufficient flexibility for melismatic passages. Her “Es ist vollbracht” (It is fulfilled) was the highlight of Part 2. Not the least of the merits of Cummings and his AAM, is the ability to bring such a group of soloists together, and support them such that they give their best to this magnificent work.
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