{"id":34917,"date":"2025-04-20T06:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34917\/"},"modified":"2025-04-20T06:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T06:36:18","slug":"st-john-passion-at-wigmore-hall-was-simply-breathtaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/34917\/","title":{"rendered":"St John Passion at Wigmore Hall was simply breathtaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tIn a dark and meaningful yet beautifully powerful performance,\u00a0 alto, Jess Dandy, was superb\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

In what Christians call Holy Week, Bach\u2019s two great Passions<\/a> \u2013 of Matthew and John \u2013 are still performed by choirs the length and breadth of the country. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s ear, and the beautiful \u2018rainbow of stripes\u2019 created by the bleeding wounds on Christ\u2019s flayed back.<\/p>\n

Looked at through a 21st century lens, St John Passion<\/a> 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: \u2018Take him and crucify him, for I find no fault in him.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"The performance did Bach\u2019s work proud (Photo: Dennis Chang)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s not often said, but this is \u2013 despite its composer\u2019s devout Lutheranism \u2013 a thoroughly anti-Semitic work.<\/p>\n

At the same time it\u2019s magnificent beyond words, and at the Wigmore Hall the little period-instrument English Concert 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.<\/p>\n

The performance was studded with wonderful solo moments, most notably from bass Ashley Riches as Jesus, and tenor Patrick Grahl as the Evangelist. Riches\u2019s sound had immense warmth and power in the surreal aria Betrachte, meine Seele (\u2018Observe, my soul\u2019), while Grahl\u2019s crystal-clear diction \u2013 and capacity to switch roles \u2013 kept the show magisterially on the road.<\/p>\n

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 (\u2018It is finished\u2019). Rachel Redmond\u2019s light and soaring soprano gilded every moment she was out front.<\/p>\n

To find the antithesis of this brilliant small-scale event, I went along to the massive Bach Choir\u2019s annual performance of the St Matthew Passion at the Southbank Centre. Musically that was no less excellent, and, as with the English Concert, there wasn\u2019t a seat to spare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a dark and meaningful yet beautifully powerful performance,\u00a0 alto, Jess Dandy, was superb\u00a0 In what Christians call…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,16925,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-34917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-classical-music","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114368911250131075","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}