Bach: St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion)
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Music CD Cover Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2003-04-08 Music Label: Deutsche Grammophon |
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Free Music Notes for Bach: St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion) Album
Free Music Review: Revelatory
Hit: 5 Stars
I am sure many Bach fanatics and fans of McCreesh's revisionary performances have been as eagerly awaiting this release as I have been. Should you have any doubts about whether or not you need yet another recording of the St Matthew Passion, I cannot urge you strongly enough to dismiss them.So many features of this release were sure to raise an eyebrow before we could hear it-- if nothing else, how could McCreesh possibly fit the work on two discs? The tempos, indeed, are very fast, but not wholly unsurprising-- after all, Gardiner's opening swing was probably further removed from Richter's solemnity than this performance from any of the currently available period-instrument offerings. What is really fresh and astounding is how very much an *ensemble* performance this is-- a fact that I think makes much of a "difference" here than in perhaps any of Bach's works that have received similar treatment in the two decades since Rifkin's revolutionary performance of the B-minor Mass.
Why is this work so special a case? Primarily because the composite text involves so many different modes of utterance-- biblical narration, dramatic dialogue, communal response, solitary meditation-- and because the one-to-a-part approach both complicates the boundaries between these modalities and sets them in a newly clear light. Aren't we, after all, used to hearing the words of the Evangelist in a recognizably distinct voice, often that of a well-known singer? Here, however, the tenor carries through from the recitative into the turbae choruses, and thence into the chorales. To give only one example, the transition from the turba "Herr, bin ich's" to the chorale "Ich bin's . . . " has always been remarkable as a bridge between the "dramatic" and "communal" aspects of the work, as the congregation of believers recognizes its implicit guilt in the death of Christ. How much stranger, and harder to tease apart, is the seamless progression from narrative, to action, to commentary.
But this is not a must-have recording simply because of the theoretical issues that it raises. McCreesh, in an interview that makes up a good part of the accompanying commentary, emphasizes that scholarship is for him primarily and ancillary to music-making. And he discounts the dismissal of his approach and tempi as "irreverent." I'm not sure he's entirely right on that last point, except insofar as he does force us to shed some of the *pernicious* pieties-- not a matter of faith or admiration for Bach genius, but ingrained habits of listening that have more to do with the "vinyl theater" aspect of the classical recording than with the thing itself. This is not, like Herreweghe's excellent recording, one you will take from the shelf, say, to listen to the recitatives and arias sung by your favorite countertenor. The clarity of detail, the brisk tempi, and judicious editing all contribute to making this a record that you will want to listen to straight through.