Teodor Currentzis performed Bach’s St. Matthew Passion

The musicAeterna Orchestra and Choir, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary, performed a grandiose work of the Baroque era – “St. Matthew Passion” by Johann Sebastian Bach. Music full of sorrowful lamentations, painful emotions of grief, suffering and heartbreak was heard in the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic and in the Moscow Zaryadye Hall. Teodor Currentzis was the conductor both evenings. I listened sympathetically to the unhurried and thoughtful unfolding of the story about the last days of Christ’s life at the St. Petersburg concert Gulara Sadikh-zade.

“The St. Matthew Passion” belongs to that rare type of artistic expression when the author, speaking about the timeless and impersonal, chooses an extremely personal, emotionally interested tone. The ethical message of Bach’s Passion is so strong that in modern and recent times, after the revival of the masterpiece by twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn in 1829, Bach’s passions determined the identity of European culture, especially in German-speaking Protestant countries.

“Passion” – Passion – a genre born in the depths of the medieval church community even before the Reformation and the division of churches. But the genre of passions reaches its highest expression in the Baroque era in the bosom of the Protestant (Lutheran) church, where, from the custom of reading the corresponding passages from the Gospel during Holy Week, a tradition of “musicalizing” the canonical text developed, which gradually led to the formation of grandiose oratorio opuses.

Bach’s passions were performed in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church during Bach’s lifetime on Good Friday. This is an emotional, intensely pathetic, highly dramatic story about the last hours of Christ’s earthly life, from the Last Supper to burial. Bach did not consider it possible to translate the words of the Evangelist Matthew into a poetic way, as many librettists of that time did – in the “Matthew Passion” there is a poetic text written by Christian Friedrich Henrici, but it is used only in inserted arias and choruses, but the Gospel text it sounds, as it is called, as it is, in the classic translation of Luther for the German literary tradition.

The peculiarity of the “Passion” as a purely Protestant variety of oratorio music lies precisely in the fact that it has several narrative plans. The first and main thing is the recitation of the Evangelist, who talks about the events that took place in the third person. From time to time, other characters speaking in the first person are included in the narrative: Jesus himself (necessarily bass), his disciple Peter, Pilate, the High Priest, Judas (also bass), as well as minor characters: Pilate’s wife, priests. From time to time, a choir—turba (crowd)—bursts into the action with their remarks.

The third plan is the stops of action in numerous arias (there are 18 of them in the “Matthew Passion”), where a contrite spirit indulges in sad reflections about human sins and the suffering of Christ; this is a plan for spiritual meditation, reflection on human nature, contemplative commentary on what happened. Solo and choral numbers are interspersed with the sound of liturgical chorales in Bach’s harmonic arrangement.

Such multi-layeredness gives a stereoscopic effect to the story of the passion of Christ. Its dramatic core is the intense recitative declamation of the Evangelist – necessarily a tenor; the tradition has developed since the times when in church during Holy Week the corresponding passages were read out in two contrasting voices on behalf of the Evangelist and Christ. From time to time, a calm, somewhat detached, monotonous recitation suddenly explodes with ragged phrases, expressive exclamations, sweeping leaps into wide unstable intervals or the movement of the melody along unstable steps. By such means, Bach depicts how the narrator’s excitement and sorrow break through when he is no longer able to control himself and maintain an objectified tone. As a rule, the Evangelist’s phrases hang unfinished, disappear in the descending melodic moves of imperfect or half-cadences – and then the instrumental accompaniment tactfully brings the phrase to the end.

At the concert, Egor Semenkov sang the part of the Evangelist, and this was an example of an exemplary, absolutely canonical performance. It was felt that the singer was familiar with a long trail of performing traditions and conventions. His sonorous and strong tenor sounded flexible and natural, even in the most stunning and tragic moments of sacred drama; articulation was impeccable, understanding of the meaning of spoken words was close to ideal. Semenkov’s voice did not become hoarse and did not weaken at all even towards the finale of the oratorio, although the performance of “Passion” lasted three and a half hours.

The orchestra’s musicians played, of course, on replicas of historical instruments from Bach’s era in Baroque tuning, in which the A note of the first octave is lower by about a semitone than in modern tuning. Therefore, the sound of the strings in Bach’s orchestra is much less intense – the tessitura is slightly lower; In addition, string players used gut strings and a semicircular bow-shaped bow with free tension, which gave even greater softness and delicacy to their sound compared to modern instruments, in which metal strings vibrate more strongly and sound much more powerful, sharper and more defined. The orchestra also included a seven-string viola da gamba, a precious instrument for many Baroque composers with a particularly dark and bitter sound.

This time, in the timbre bouquet of the Baroque orchestra, a group of woodwinds sounded beautifully: longitudinal and transverse flutes gracefully drew winding melodic lines, chirped, led the melody in two voices, with double notes – in third or sixth – so clean, sweet and neat that the heart rejoiced .

In “St. Matthew Passion,” Bach’s most grandiose oratorio opus, there are actually two orchestras, located at the left and right of the conductor, two choirs (and additional ripieni choral voices heard in the first number – in this case it was the children’s choir “Spring” ”, who went straight into the passage in the middle of the stalls, and the funeral service, as laid out, modestly left), as well as two ensembles of soloists. Thus, Bach consistently maintains the responsorial principle of composition in his opus magnum.

The musicAeterna choir, educated, trained and trained by the outstanding choirmaster of our time, Vitaly Polonsky, sounded impressively bright and precise. Without the slightest hesitation he interacted with the orchestra, instantly transforming himself either into disciples of Christ or into a raging crowd. But the most touching moments of the passions were those in which chorales sounded – the simple melodies of Lutheran hymns that the community sang and still sings during worship.

Bach himself selected these melodies and texts – and tactfully, very inventively harmonized them. It was the sound of chorales, continually intruding into the dramatic plan of the narrative, that introduced into it the dimension of eternity: chorales are the collective wisdom and soul of Lutheranism, they contain humility and meekness, they are filled with a living and naive religious feeling. These painful arrests in simple chord progressions, now and then deviating into close keys, but always returning to the tonic, shed goodness and quiet light on the dramatic vicissitudes of the gospel story.

Another semantic layer is prayerful meditations and reflections expressed in solo arias. Particularly popular is the alto aria “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” (“Have mercy, my God”), where the gentle voice of the alto (or, as has become the custom since the end of the 20th century, the countertenor) is accompanied by the violin, entwining the voice of the soloist with lace curls of the melody. At the concert at the BZF, the viola aria was soulfully and sweetly performed by Andrei Nemzer, and the violin part was led by Vlad Pesin, one of the orchestra’s accompanists.

But in tone and intensity, the first and second parts of the Passion were noticeably different. If the first part was designed rather in a gallant style – in the orchestra Currentzis especially emphasized grace, hidden dance rhythms, almost minuet curtsies in cadences, then in the second, starting with the aria “Oh woe is me, my Jesus has disappeared!”, tragedy, and together with and the intensity of the sound increased with each number. The listener was led along with Christ through reproach and mockery, ridicule and false testimony of the unrighteous, an unjust trial, scourging, procession to Calvary, mockery of the guards and death on the cross – the bass in the orchestra becomes deeper and darker, the sound thickens, the affects of grief, sadness come to the fore plan.

What can be argued with is the way the first part of the Passion was performed; for my taste, the conductor took a too light, sometimes even frivolous tone from the very beginning, from the orchestral brief introduction to the first chorus – “Come, daughters of Zion”, choosing a tempo that was more mobile than necessary. And thus, the message of the mournful beginning was shaded – where the step of the mournful procession is heard with an ostinato and a pedal of low strings. But in the first choir it is sung “O Lamb of God, immaculate, nailed on the tree of the cross!” – that is, the narrative begins from the end, from the main climactic event, and this colors the entire oratorio in tones of sorrow.

And yet the experience of the authenticity and significance of the moment, which finally overtook at the concert, was acute. “The St. Matthew Passion,” for all the veneration with which it is surrounded, is rarely performed in our country – and the present time fills this great music with new meanings that seem piercingly important right now.