Monday, April 28, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
Easter Message
And so to my regular seat for the Britten Sinfonia's Easter weekend St.John Passion.
I'll get the fashion stuff out of the way early: suffice to say the band take their usual liberties with "formal black": Jacquie Shave is wearing her calf length gladiator sandals with layers of net curtain, black lace and rags and a fascinator in her hair the size of a chicken. Miranda Dale's in that gloriously trashed crushed silk ball gown of hers that looks like it spent the afternoon inside a cement mixer and is all the more attractive for it, Claire Finnimore has her stripy clown top on and Julia Doyle (this evening's soprano) is in a period black chiffon and gold under-slip creation that would have driven Mister Darcy crazy.
The boys are all in black like extras from a gangster movie.
So … Bach's dark masterpiece: betrayal, capture, denial, interrogation, condemnation, flagellation, humiliation, crucifixion, death, burial. It's a laugh a minute, this one, but this is Easter, after all. Chocolate eggs and bunnies don't get a look in.
Having spent the weekend re-reading John Eliot Gardiner's "Music in the Castle of Heaven" (the best Bach book ever), and listening to SJPs ranging from enormous, lush, fifties orchestrations, through Britten's stark rendering, via the rise of the period instrument puritanism and culminating in John Butt's glorious reading from last year which placed the Passion in its original liturgical setting (including a downloadable one hour contemporary German sermon for the middle) I wondered just what Jacquie and the gang would do with it. They are notoriously unconventional (one reason I love them so much).
A funny and enlightening pre-concert chat involving countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Nicholas Mulroy (this evening's Evangelist) revealed that we were getting a stripped down, Bach-style band with no conductor, led by Jacquie at first violin. Tonally, they had gone through the score and tried various instruments for various parts, resulting in a balance of modern strings, oboes and flutes with period archlute, viola de gamba, harpsichord and that sweet little baroque organ covered in fretwork that the Bach Players use at the Octagon Chapel. The band felt that some parts sounded better on period instruments and some on modern so they balanced it out and the result was indeed gloriously light and transparent, with every note and every part seeming not so much the Britten Sinfonia's SJP but more Bach's own voice rendered as clearly as possible. Plus, of course, founders Jacquie and Nick trained with Britten and Pears so the chamber orchestra genius has rubbed off.
Rather than the usual organ continuo, they decided that Christ would have the organ and strings, the Evangelist the harpsichord and viola de gamba with cellos, "Es ist vollbracht" with just viola de gamba and the tiniest of organ washes; each singer an identifiable set of instruments tailored to their character. It worked beautifully.
Anyhoo … "HERR!" Good God, y'all: has there ever been a scarier opening to a piece than the SJP? No, there has not. The quietly twining sinister serpent lines of the woodwind and strings building dissonance upon dissonance in mysterious darkness until the tension is unbearable and then that glorious first "HERR!" Woah, Nellie! Bach's congregation must have shat themselves, especially as Bach's band were behind and above them.
Nicholas Mulroy's Evangelist was tremendous, quite a feat considering that the BritSinf had just arrived from frantic nights in London's Barbican and in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. It's a huge part: physically and emotionally draining and at the curtain calls he was visibly trashed.
Matthew Brook was towering as Christ, a full-on Wotan for the bass arias but vulnerable and tearjerkingly real as Christ (yes, we cried); defiant yet resigned with Pilate (Eamonn Dougan - boffo), aware of the horrors to come but unwilling to change the fate his birth had inevitably triggered, the interspersed arias from Iestyn Davies and Julia Doyle only throwing the darkness into relief and intensifying it.
The chorus was genuinely terrifying in its howling mob frenzy, hounding Pilate with: "Kruezige! Kruezige!" baying for crucifixion.
Pilate's own despairing defiance of the mob with "Was ich geschrieben habe, das habe ich geschrieben." his last resistance. He turns aside and lets it happen.
The silences. The horror of Golgotha. Nobody in the packed audience dared breathe. Christ's "Siehe, das ist deine Mutter." utterly heartbreaking. And then the brief, beautiful chorale before the final breath. "Es ist vollbracht!" English doesn't have an "acht" with which to end a word but it is perfect for the silence to follow.
And into that silence Iestyn Davies' gorgeous countertenor sings Bach's lamenting aria "Es ist vollbracht" accompanied by Richard Tunnclife's plangent viola de gamba and there's not a dry eye in the house.
Matthew Brook storms back in full force for the burial arias with bass and chorus building to a climax of utter, hopeless darkness. There's no resurrection in the SJP: it stops short as any Good Friday piece should. And then, as the bleak despair envelops you those first three notes of "Ruht wohl" stop you dead and you know in an instant that Bach has achieved perfection. The next three notes bring floods of tears but also relief and hope. The woodwind are fantastic, especially the oboes, but then their voice is the perfect complement to the human singers. By the time the chorus reaches "Macht mir den Himmel auf und schließt die Hölle zu." you are wrapped in the warmth of Bach's love as Christ will be when God "opens Heaven for me and shuts the gates of Hell."
It only remains for the final chorale to tie things up, letting the audience breathe again, and then it's curtain call after curtain call.
The singers have been magnificent, the mix of period and modern instruments beautifully balanced and allowing Bach to speak more clearly than on any recorded version I have heard. The sound (in the acoustically perfect hall) far superior to the otherwise gorgeous reverberation of the Cathedral.
A triumph. Hell, I'm an atheist and it tore me to pieces.
Stumbling out into the darkness through revellers drinking and partying their own Easter away you realise the lesson has not been learned. We still arrest, torture and murder people: Guantanamo, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition to states where suspects can be brutally tortured while we look the other way, and to save us Pilate's bloody hands we no longer bother with the trial, simply sending drones to murder for us so that we do not need the guilt-trip of the legal process.
Someone needs to drag the world's "leaders" - most especially those who claim to have God on their side - into a performance of Bach's St.John Passion. If they don't learn from that, then it's all been in vain.
Happy Easter, peeps.
Click for Guardian review of the Barbican gig.
I'll get the fashion stuff out of the way early: suffice to say the band take their usual liberties with "formal black": Jacquie Shave is wearing her calf length gladiator sandals with layers of net curtain, black lace and rags and a fascinator in her hair the size of a chicken. Miranda Dale's in that gloriously trashed crushed silk ball gown of hers that looks like it spent the afternoon inside a cement mixer and is all the more attractive for it, Claire Finnimore has her stripy clown top on and Julia Doyle (this evening's soprano) is in a period black chiffon and gold under-slip creation that would have driven Mister Darcy crazy.
The boys are all in black like extras from a gangster movie.
So … Bach's dark masterpiece: betrayal, capture, denial, interrogation, condemnation, flagellation, humiliation, crucifixion, death, burial. It's a laugh a minute, this one, but this is Easter, after all. Chocolate eggs and bunnies don't get a look in.
Having spent the weekend re-reading John Eliot Gardiner's "Music in the Castle of Heaven" (the best Bach book ever), and listening to SJPs ranging from enormous, lush, fifties orchestrations, through Britten's stark rendering, via the rise of the period instrument puritanism and culminating in John Butt's glorious reading from last year which placed the Passion in its original liturgical setting (including a downloadable one hour contemporary German sermon for the middle) I wondered just what Jacquie and the gang would do with it. They are notoriously unconventional (one reason I love them so much).
A funny and enlightening pre-concert chat involving countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Nicholas Mulroy (this evening's Evangelist) revealed that we were getting a stripped down, Bach-style band with no conductor, led by Jacquie at first violin. Tonally, they had gone through the score and tried various instruments for various parts, resulting in a balance of modern strings, oboes and flutes with period archlute, viola de gamba, harpsichord and that sweet little baroque organ covered in fretwork that the Bach Players use at the Octagon Chapel. The band felt that some parts sounded better on period instruments and some on modern so they balanced it out and the result was indeed gloriously light and transparent, with every note and every part seeming not so much the Britten Sinfonia's SJP but more Bach's own voice rendered as clearly as possible. Plus, of course, founders Jacquie and Nick trained with Britten and Pears so the chamber orchestra genius has rubbed off.
Rather than the usual organ continuo, they decided that Christ would have the organ and strings, the Evangelist the harpsichord and viola de gamba with cellos, "Es ist vollbracht" with just viola de gamba and the tiniest of organ washes; each singer an identifiable set of instruments tailored to their character. It worked beautifully.
Anyhoo … "HERR!" Good God, y'all: has there ever been a scarier opening to a piece than the SJP? No, there has not. The quietly twining sinister serpent lines of the woodwind and strings building dissonance upon dissonance in mysterious darkness until the tension is unbearable and then that glorious first "HERR!" Woah, Nellie! Bach's congregation must have shat themselves, especially as Bach's band were behind and above them.
Nicholas Mulroy's Evangelist was tremendous, quite a feat considering that the BritSinf had just arrived from frantic nights in London's Barbican and in Amsterdam's Concertgebouw. It's a huge part: physically and emotionally draining and at the curtain calls he was visibly trashed.
Matthew Brook was towering as Christ, a full-on Wotan for the bass arias but vulnerable and tearjerkingly real as Christ (yes, we cried); defiant yet resigned with Pilate (Eamonn Dougan - boffo), aware of the horrors to come but unwilling to change the fate his birth had inevitably triggered, the interspersed arias from Iestyn Davies and Julia Doyle only throwing the darkness into relief and intensifying it.
The chorus was genuinely terrifying in its howling mob frenzy, hounding Pilate with: "Kruezige! Kruezige!" baying for crucifixion.
Pilate's own despairing defiance of the mob with "Was ich geschrieben habe, das habe ich geschrieben." his last resistance. He turns aside and lets it happen.
The silences. The horror of Golgotha. Nobody in the packed audience dared breathe. Christ's "Siehe, das ist deine Mutter." utterly heartbreaking. And then the brief, beautiful chorale before the final breath. "Es ist vollbracht!" English doesn't have an "acht" with which to end a word but it is perfect for the silence to follow.
And into that silence Iestyn Davies' gorgeous countertenor sings Bach's lamenting aria "Es ist vollbracht" accompanied by Richard Tunnclife's plangent viola de gamba and there's not a dry eye in the house.
Matthew Brook storms back in full force for the burial arias with bass and chorus building to a climax of utter, hopeless darkness. There's no resurrection in the SJP: it stops short as any Good Friday piece should. And then, as the bleak despair envelops you those first three notes of "Ruht wohl" stop you dead and you know in an instant that Bach has achieved perfection. The next three notes bring floods of tears but also relief and hope. The woodwind are fantastic, especially the oboes, but then their voice is the perfect complement to the human singers. By the time the chorus reaches "Macht mir den Himmel auf und schließt die Hölle zu." you are wrapped in the warmth of Bach's love as Christ will be when God "opens Heaven for me and shuts the gates of Hell."
It only remains for the final chorale to tie things up, letting the audience breathe again, and then it's curtain call after curtain call.
The singers have been magnificent, the mix of period and modern instruments beautifully balanced and allowing Bach to speak more clearly than on any recorded version I have heard. The sound (in the acoustically perfect hall) far superior to the otherwise gorgeous reverberation of the Cathedral.
A triumph. Hell, I'm an atheist and it tore me to pieces.
Stumbling out into the darkness through revellers drinking and partying their own Easter away you realise the lesson has not been learned. We still arrest, torture and murder people: Guantanamo, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition to states where suspects can be brutally tortured while we look the other way, and to save us Pilate's bloody hands we no longer bother with the trial, simply sending drones to murder for us so that we do not need the guilt-trip of the legal process.
Someone needs to drag the world's "leaders" - most especially those who claim to have God on their side - into a performance of Bach's St.John Passion. If they don't learn from that, then it's all been in vain.
Happy Easter, peeps.
Click for Guardian review of the Barbican gig.
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
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