In a dark and meaningful yet beautifully powerful performance, alto, Jess Dandy, was superb
In what Christians call Holy Week, Bach’s two great Passions – of Matthew and John – are still performed by choirs the length and breadth of the country.
On one hand we have the gravely monumental St Matthew Passion. On the other, the visceral St John Passion, which dwells not only on the pathos of the story, but also on such Tarantino-type details as hoodlums cutting off a servant’s ear, and the beautiful ‘rainbow of stripes’ created by the bleeding wounds on Christ’s flayed back.
Looked at through a 21st century lens, St John Passion is a strikingly topical work. You want to portray weak and corrupt rulers under pressure? Consider the crowd-pleasing Pilate, who gives short shrift to an unpopular prisoner who is guilty of no crime: ‘Take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.’
You want to illustrate mindless mass hatred? Bach shows its workings in graphic detail, and not only through the illogicality of its reasoning. He also shows it musically, whipping up boiling rage by hurrying the tempo, and raising the pitch to a ridiculous level. It’s not often said, but this is – despite its composer’s devout Lutheranism – a thoroughly anti-Semitic work.
At the same time it’s magnificent beyond words, and at the Wigmore Hall the little period-instrument English Consort did it proud. Under the direction of Francesco Corti, its small chorus might have been a cast of thousands, so powerfully did they project. Their opening, where the music seemed to be emerging threateningly from the bowels of the earth, had gripping force.
The performance was studded with wonderful solo moments, most notably from bass Ashley Riches as Jesus, and tenor Patrick Grahl as the Evangelist. Riches’s sound had immense warmth and power in the surreal aria Betrachte, meine Seele (‘Observe, my soul’), while Grahl’s crystal-clear diction – and capacity to switch roles – kept the show magisterially on the road.
And in Jess Dandy, classified as an alto but possessing the most darkly beautiful contralto sound, the work had a tailor-made winner for its most heart-rending aria, Es ist vollbracht (‘It is finished’). Rachel Redmond’s light and soaring soprano gilded every moment she was out front.
To find the antithesis of this brilliant small-scale event, I went along to the massive Bach Choir’s annual performance of the St Matthew Passion at the Southbank Centre. Musically that was no less excellent, and, as with the English Consort, there wasn’t a seat to spare.