Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | St Matthew Passion, BWV244

Immersive, direct and passionate Bach from English Touring Opera and the Old Street Band.

Stephen Layton returns to Auckland to continue his series of Bach's choral masterpieces with the APO. 

A brooding and melancholy presentation of Bach’s masterpiece from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Mark Padmore. 

John Eliot Gardiner assembled the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists for a moving performance of JS Bach's great oratorio.

Under the baton of Harry Christophers and direction of Penny Woolcock, Streetwise Opera, The Sixteen, Sixteen Orchestra, backed by a number of Manchester-based organisations came together to bring a well-crafted Easter dramatisation of one of Johann Sebastian Bach’s seminal oratorios. 

Bach is music for the soul, and when excellent musicians are performing it, it cannot fail to be beautiful. Thanks to the considerable strengths of the many involved, there is really no better way to spend a weekend in Lent than lamenting through a Bach Passion in the Konzerthaus. 

The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, in collaboration with Peter Sellars, brings their superb dramatic performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion to New York.

Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic give a unique and hugely poignant performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, staged by Peter Sellars.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the chorus and several soloists star in a dramatic version of Bach's St Matthew Passion in which l'Orchestre Métropolitain was less distinguished. 

Thomas Zehetmair brings out all the ochestral detail of Bach's masterpiece, creating a beautifully approachable and engaging St Matthew Passion that goes straight to the heart of the story.

Admittedly, it has been quite some time since I heard a St Matthew Passion in a concert hall as opposed to a church. The Concert Hall of the Danish Radio in Copenhagen is an impressive building both inside and out; it was well-filled and buzzing with excitement for a passion featuring the radio orchestra, choir as well as young and attractive international soloists.

Richard Egarr leads the Academy of Ancient Music and a stellar team of vocal soloists in an unapologetically lush and dramatic St Matthew Passion.

How do we handle the Christian heritage of art and music, such as J.S. Bach’s gripping passions and oratorios, in an increasingly secularized society? When Folkoperan in Stockholm take on the challenge of staging the St Matthew Passion, the result is a slightly sensationalist result, where the ensemble members take turns observing and commiserating with the suffering which we all go through.

Any venue, cathedral or concert hall, that advertises a Good Friday performance of J.S. Bach’s epic St Matthew Passion is likely to sell out; even Birmingham’s vast Symphony Hall is no exception, today being full to bursting with eager parishioners making their annual pilgrimage to wallow in Bach’s all-consuming musical ministry.

In his biography of Richard Wagner, Michael Tanner writes that Tristan und Isolde is one of two great masterpieces that have the musical brilliance, the intellectual strength and the emotional power to convert you to its philosophical cause. The other, naturally, is the St Matthew Passion.

J.S. Bach didn’t write an opera, but if he had, it’d probably be the best opera in the world. Fortunately for us, he wrote the next best thing, his Mattäus-Passion, a work of such dramatic power, that even in the concert or church settings in which it is usually performed, its highly emotional narrative thread is still captivating.

Passion is not for the faint-hearted. This performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion weighed in at three hours (excluding interval). However, my attention did not waver, and this seemed true of the rest of enraptured audience.

With such a star-studded line-up at a concert that had been sold out for weeks, this was always going to be an evening to remember. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of those iconic pieces that never gets old, and every time I hear the throbbing bass of the opening chorus, I still get a tingle of excitement.

Joshua Rifkin’s theory that Bach had no ‘choir’ in the modern sense may have gradually inched its way towards acceptance, but for all the heated discussion his research has generated, one-per-part Passions are rarer than one might suppose.

Probably no other work in the repertoire has such mystical status as Bach's Matthew Passion. Phrases like "The Greatest Work in the Western Canon", trip glibly off the tongue while failing to illuminate its greatness or acknowledge its strangeness. It is the sacred cow of sacred cows.

Christmas may have inspired much of the greatest holiday-related popular music, but in the Classical tradition, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (to say nothing of his St. John Passion and Easter Oratorio) points toward the influence of Easter.

On Saturday, Philippe Herreweghe conducted the season’s most solemn yet spectacular oratorio concert in New York – a performance of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. Scored for two choirs, two orchestras, and soloists, this almost operatic depiction of Christ’s Passion was performed by Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent Choir and Orchestra.

Part of the St Thomas Choir Leipzig’s 800th anniversary celebrations, this Manchester concert was a deeply moving evening in which superb musicianship all round seemed almost to bring Bach himself, a Thomaskantor (choir director) in his day, to the Bridgewater Hall.The Passions of J.S. Bach are well described in Paul Kilbey’s recent article. The St.

Easter wouldn't be complete without a performance of the St Matthew Passion, Johann Sebastian Bach's epic and intense interpretation of the crucifixion.

On reste un peu sur sa faim avec cette Passion selon Saint Matthieu dans laquelle l’extrême clarté de la narration ne laisse pas assez de place à la spiritualité.

No es infrecuente tener la oportunidad de escuchar la Pasión según San Mateo en el transcurso de la Semana Santa, lo que incrementa el número y la intensidad de elementos diegéticos que operan en la representación. En esta ocasión, además, la fecha era señalada por la comparecencia de una pléyade instrumental y vocal: la Orchester und Chor der Klangverwaltung y el Münchner Knabenchor bajo la avezada batuta de Enoch zu Guttenberg.

À la veille du cinquantième jour du temps pascal, le Festival « Passe ton Bach d’abord » offrait, pour sa dixième édition, une ambitieuse Passion selon Saint Matthieu par l’éternel kapellmeister. 

Synecdoque de la Passion et donc référence la plus évidente en pleine semaine sainte, la Passion selon Saint Matthieu, monumentale, canonique, proprement géniale, bouleverse et surprend encore son auditeur.

Die Aufführung von Johann Sebastian Bachs großen Passionsoratorien am Karfreitag ist in Hamburg alljährliche Tradition und die Kantorei St. Jacobi präsentierte eine gewohnt solide Interpretation seiner Matthäuspassion.

Expressivité et justesse de propos font exulter le public dans une interprétation qui fait référence.

El RIAS-Kammerchor y la Akademie Für Alte Musik de Berlín se presentaron en el Palau de la Música Catalana para ofrecer una cristalina versión de la Pasión según San Mateo de la mano de René Jacobs que, centrada en la voz y el texto, levantó las ovaciones del público.

Herreweghe consiguió un todo coherente a través de un discurso muy bien hilado donde las pausas, lejos de propiciar un punto de reposo para los músicos o para el oyente, se presentaron como recursos declamatorios para propiciar la asimilación del material musical y la reflexión sobre el contenido narrativo.

Programme pléthorique que celui de cette soirée ! A l’ordre du jour, un corpus d’œuvres mues par la passion, où J.S. Bach flirte avec Manoury et Vito Zuraj lance d’incessants clins d’œil à B.A. Zimmerman.

Trotz minimalster Unstimmigkeiten allein wegen der flüssigen, dramatischen Ausgestaltung mit hervorragendem Chor und Solistenglanzlichtern summa cum laude für das Opus Summum.

Una Pasión según San Mateo semiescenificada fue la apuesta principal del International Bach Festival de Gran Canaria, que músicos de distintas procedencias han hecho realidad.

Mark Padmore est aujourd’hui l’un des Évangélistes les plus renommés et expérimentés de la scène internationale. Pour ce concert qu'il dirige aussi il a choisi un effectif de 16 chanteurs pour l'ensemble des parties vocales.

Le 15 avril, Ton Koopman interprétait la Passion selon Saint Matthieu avec l’Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir. Un oratorio absolument incontournable, dont la subtilité musicale dépasse le cadre de la foi.