Ending Easter

Three days later we were at it again: in Llewellyn Hall, with the Canberra Chorale and Bach’s St John Passion, this time with the ANU Chamber Choir and the ABC for a live broadcast to ABCFM radio. Perhaps it’s strange to hear a passion on Easter Sunday, but it’s a great work and satisfying either way. The concert started with the ANU Chamber Choir performing Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat. This was a delicate work of shimmering sopranos, high tenors, soft and swelling tones and gently moving harmonic colours. Wikipedia says it’s “divided into verse and tutti sections. The verse sections include one voice (often a soprano solo) which remains constantly on third-space C, as well as a lower, melodic line. The tutti sections make use of either three, four, or six voice parts. The soprano soloist joins in the tutti sections at times”*. Delicate and quite lovely. The rest of the concert comprised excerpts from the English version of St John Passion that I wrote up in my previous post. I found this a more confident performance than the world premiere of a few days earlier, but it was also the “best bits” with plenty of choral highlights and with an enlarged choir when the ANU singers joined in for the later passages. We spoke to Jesus (Paul Cambridge, bass) on the way out and he was obviously amused by having just a few lines, but so be it. Translator and Evangelist (the tenor who tells the story) Christopher Steele had been very impressive at the full concert and we thought even better here, more relaxed and vibrant (and less hard worked). Suffice to say, this was not the full work, and it suffered for that, but what there was was more confident and settled. This may have been just a minor reincarnation, but it was a gem.

The Oriana Chorale and Orchestra performed excerpts from the JS Bach St John Passion. The Evangelist and translator for this English version was Christopher Steele. The conductor was David Mackay. The ANU Chamber Choir was conducted by bengt-Olov Palmqvist and they performed the Arvo Pärt Magnificat.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat_(Pärt), viewed 8 April 2012

The centrality of the Easter message

St John Passion was our second JS Bach passion for the week. St John and St Matthew comprise all the extant Bach passions although he is reputed to have written five. Wikipedia compares them thus: “The St John Passion was described as more realistic, faster paced and more anguished than the reflective and resigned St Matthew Passion. The St John Passion is also shorter and has simpler orchestration than the St Matthew Passion”*. This verison of St John Passion is something again: this was the world premier performance of an English translation by ANU graduate Christopher Steele, who also performed the central role of Evangelist. I enjoyed that I could follow the words rather than read surtitles, although you have to accept some contorted language expressed in long rows of semiquavers in baroque style like: “You tor..men…ted spir...it”, or “Haste…to…Golgotha…””. It’s musically angular and protracted but that’s the baroque way and it’s immensely entertaining and aurally satisfying. Some lines were amusing, too. I thought “His clothes had been made very simply / from end to end without a seam” was curiously mundane for such a high theme, but maybe that’s part of the Christian story, too. We started well back in the Llewellyn Hall, but I found the ensemble was not imposing enough for this big space: the volume not intense enough; the impression not overwhleming enough; the words lost in distance. I moved to the third row for the second half and the words became clear, the echoed lines moved from right to left from basses to tenors to altos and sopranos, the renunciations of the choir when they chose Barabas became personal and the relegation of Pilate and the loss of Mary were close to hand. I expect it was like this in Bach’s church: a small ensemble in a reverberent, intimate space to ensconce the listener. But the playing and singing was wonderfully capable. I felt a tad uncomfortable with the instrumentals at the start (this is hot from the top so needs a generous warmup) and one other time (when Bach seemed more adventurous and had had my ears flumoxed), but otherwise the choir and performers were an absolute delight. The Passions are wonderful expressions of the loss of Good Friday and I can only sit back in awe at Bach’s creation and particularly in this case enjoy the imtimacy of the English text and admire the effectiveness of this performance. No need to be a believer to be entranced by music like this.

St John Passion was performed by The Oriana Chorale conducted by David Mackay, with soloists from the ANU School of Music and orchestra led by Barbara Jane Gilby. The translator, Christopher Steele, sang the main role of Evangelist.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passions_(Bach), viewed 7 April 2012