Organ evangelists

A mate has moved to Ballarat and we’ve discovered the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields festival. It sounds quaint, but this is the 20th iteration of this annual festival and the opening concert is a rendition of Bach St Matthew Passion so we were drawn to it for the weekend. It’s an odd time for a passion, this not being Easter, but so be it. The location as good: an impressive stone church from the Goldrush era, St Patricks, built when, for 2 years, Ballarat was the richest metropolitan area in the world. I expect that’s how they can run a festival around church organs: there are lots of sturdy, impressive, imposing buildings here, including churches presumably all with organs. That said, the organs for Bach were two portable baroque organs, with harpsichord, two orchestras, two SATBs and one soprano choir, a range of period instruments, traverso, theorbo, viola da gamba. So we had lighter string sounds and occasionally diverse tones. Of interest to me were two basses, one with each orchestra, one five string, another with C-extension. And an “Evangelist continuo group” and one smaller group that forms from the others to accompany Jesus. It sounded small in the big space to start, but our ears soon adjusted. We’d wondered if this would be truncated somehow, but no, this was the full 3 hours or so. It was sung in German, but the program had an English translation. I’d expected that following the script would interrupt the music, but no, it enlivened the story and the structure and highlighted the language that’s common to Bach and mass and Bible. And, despite Bach’s Protestantism, it’s a work that sits perfectly in the more ornate Catholic traditions, like the B minor mass that we heard recently. It’s a big work, choreographed with various solo singers moving to front and returning to choir. The busy Evangelist is up front, male, tenor, telling the story to Jesus’ bass. Daniel Thompson was Evangelist and he was fabulous, evocative and superbly voiced. Stephen Grant was Christ, central but less featured, well voiced and praised for his performance. Other characters were Peter and Judas and Pilate and a few false witnesses and Pilate’s wife and some others and the whole choir appearing as Jews who damn Christ and save Barabbas and sit in tears at the end which doesn’t quite reach the resurrection. Strange, that. So, in all: story well known; composition stunning and expansive and always dignified; performance impressive and sometimes breathtaking. A great start for a festival if strangely not utilising any of the (church) organs of the Ballarat Goldfields, but so what.

Bach St Matthew Passion was performed as the opening concert of the Organs of the Ballarat Goldfields festival. Performers included Gary Ekkel (director), Daniel Thomson (Evangelist) and Stephen Grant (Jesus). The Festival Baroque Orchestra comprises an Evangelist Continuo group and two orchestras led by Cath Shugg and Simone Slattery (violins). Laura Vaughan (viola da gamba) and Greg Dikmans (traverso) featured with others. Also Robert Nicholls and Bill Cawte (basses).

Closest to Bach

It felt like the closest that I’ve got to JS Bach when we heard the St Matthew Passion last night. It was performed by the Llewellyn Choir accompanied by the Llewellyn Sinfonia and conducted by Rowan Harvey-Martin at the Canberra Girls’Grammar School hall. Why the closest? I think because it’s storytelling in German. The music remains glorious, but the essence is the story, recited in German by the Evangelist and sung in person by several solo singers and the choir as the People. The words are the essence. It was likely first performed in Thomaskirke, where Bach worked at providing music each week, on Good Friday in 1727. This was work for Bach but it was work of a believer for presentation to other believers. It’s a Passion, a reciting of Christ’s suffering on the cross, the essence of the Christian story. And from my reading of dictionary.com and the Shorter Oxford, this is the origin, from Middle English and mediaeval Latin, of our common word, passion.

It’s a long work, written for soloists, double choir and double orchestra. It was to be performed in two halves, before and after the sermon on Good Friday. The score is further divided into three parts: a narrative using biblical text; various recicatives, arias and choruses; and the chorales. It’s music that is subject to the story and the demands of the people, the claps of thunder, sadness or fear or rejections of the apostles are all expressed clearly. I revelled in the big chorale sections and loved the several returns of the main choral theme, sometimes slower, sometimes livelier, usually with varying words. I enjoyed the dignified Evangelist as he told his story that I wished I could understand without looking at a projected translation, I loved the instrumental accompaniments with the solo singers: violin, cello, organ (I think this is the same chamber organ used by Igitur Nos last week), harpsichord, flutes or oboes. I enjoyed the autal and contrapuntal movements left to right of the choirs and also the orchestras. And it’s an impressive theatre. It looks to be carefully set up for sound, although perhaps for a bigger rather than a precise sound. And it’s pleasantly human in dimensions; it has a massive stage but you still feel close. (Too bad about the noisy aircon). From the orchestra, I particularly noticed the clarity of the two single basses, and that glorious little but persistent organ sound. This music is dignified and ordered, but more than instrumental Bach, it is subordinate to words. A stunning piece of beauty well performed. Congratulations to all involved.

The Llewellyn Choir and Llewellyn Sinfonia performed JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion at the Canberra Girls’Grammar School hall. Key performers were Rowan Harvey-Martin (conductor), Michael Martin (Evangelist, tenor), Stephen Barnett (Jesus, bass), Rebecca Collins (soprano), Christina Wilson (contralto), Rohan Thatcher (bass).