The ASO's semi-staged production of "St. Matthew Passion." (Photos by J.D. Scott)
The “St. Matthew Passion,” written in the 1720s by Johannes Sebastian Bach, is one of the great touchstones of classical music, yet it is performed quite rarely. Even though choral music is a major specialty for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, it had performed the work only three times before this season. On Thursday night, the ASO brought it back for the first time since the Robert Shaw era, this time in an elegant semi-staged production.
Why is such a masterwork so rarely heard? Its length, at about three-and-a-half hours, is obviously a factor. It’s also a tricky work to put together: it’s complex, it requires soloists of the highest caliber, and the wrong approach to conducting can turn it into a long and boring night. This is a piece that works better with an “active listener.”
The word “accessible” is often thrown around in relation to modern music, but it also applies to Baroque music. It has been said half-jokingly that George Frideric Handel, a contemporary of Bach’s, was the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his day. Handel’s “Messiah” is almost foolproof, can be sung by amateur choirs and soloists, and is popular with a wide swath of the general public. None of that applies to the “St. Matthew Passion.” But for the right audience, this is a more rarefied experience.
Based on the Gospel of Matthew, the work tells the story of the last days of Jesus Christ. It was written to be performed as part of a church service, with a lengthy sermon thrown in to stretch things out a bit. The structure has several elements: the narration, mostly quoted directly from the German translation of Matthew and presented in sung recitative, much of it by a tenor (the Evangelist) over light accompaniment; soloists whose arias give the work a reflective element and become its greatest musical moments; and the choruses, which meditate further on all of this and also sing hymn-like elements.
There are two small orchestras, two choruses and a treble choir. Robert Spano, the ASO’s music director, divided the ASO Chamber Chorus in two, placed on risers in the back corners of the stage. The orchestra, similarly divided, sat in the left and right foreground, with the central area occupied by a sloping platform, behind which were abstract crosses. The Gwinnett Young Singers served as the treble choir and sang from the first balcony. In Bach’s time, their role, as well as that of the female voices in the chorus and even the female soloists, would almost certainly have been performed by boys (altos and sopranos) and castrati.
As it turns out, this was one of the great triumphs of the ASO season, an evening of great variety and shimmering beauty, anchored by world-class soloists. The Chamber Chorus, dominated by youngish voices, sings with a clear, alluring sound and has the fleet responses needed for this demanding work.
Spano managed to get a similarly transparent texture from his orchestra. The ASO is about modern instruments, but here the players seemed to transform their sound into a fine approximation of period instruments: viols, recorders and such. Bach varied the accompaniment for his soloists, and the result here was an evening of little chamber groupings that kept the evening moving around. Under Spano, it all became quite magical, never dragging.
The role of the Evangelist, which calls for cruel vocal leaps, is especially demanding. A young tenor, Thomas Glenn, sang with great clarity and agility, despite imprecise intonation. He is a charismatic performer, and he moved with unusual grace in a production where he remained center stage, with mostly choreographed movements, almost all evening.
Soloist Kelley O'Connor
Dietrich Henschel, a bass-baritone, gave a riveting performance as Jesus. His voice is expressive, commanding and rich. The soprano soloist was the esteemed Heidi Grant Murphy, who sings with warmth and refinement. Her voice is not huge, yet it manages to project to every seat.
Kelley O’Connor, a young mezzo-soprano, was stunning. The mezzo has a pretty big night in this work, and some of the most beautiful music, and this showed off O’Connor’s ample power, flexibility and range. The fine, dark coloring of her voice is perfectly matched to this material.
Tenor Thomas Cooley has a resonant, vibrant sound, sweeping gracefully from top to bottom. And Stephen Powell has a powerful and rich sound. Eight additional soloists were drawn from the resources of the chorus, and all were excellent.
Anne Patterson was responsible for the production: sets, costumes, lighting and stage movement. This was all done tastefully, using and enhancing Symphony Hall’s elegant modernist appearance. (See, it’s possible to say something nice about Symphony Hall!) The room was darkened and colors washed over the concrete structures surrounding the stage and a giant screen in back. The platform and crosses dominated the stage. Musicians and singers were dressed simply in black, and the soloists wore subdued modern street clothes.
Patterson moved her soloists around all over the limited stage and occasionally placed them in the balcony. This is not a work that calls for them to interact, but the effect of her direction was to enhance the overall impact of the work.
The “St. Matthew Passion” is divided into two sections. But, apparently in order to make changes to the stage, there was a second intermission, with the second section divided into two parts. This did no great harm to continuity and was easier on the backs of the audience. It is a testament to the holding power of Bach and the quality of the performance that most of the audience remained until the end.
The concert will be repeated Saturday at 8 p.m.
COMMENTS
Jack, you’re not wrong–if I didn’t have a strong liking for Baroque performance practice I indeed would have enjoyed the performance more. Good taste can be a curse! I think you misinterpreted one thing I said–it wasn’t the chorus that bothered me; they were outstanding. It was the soloists, other than TG. And there is no reason that the ASO couldn’t have hired soloists who could sing in the period style. (And perhaps one period violin, just as they did for the viola d’gamba.)
Lovely performance, but usually do not care for the stagings which are sometimes used by the ASO these days, with neon lighting and strange staging gimmicks. Also, would prefer the performers stay in traditional dress for symphonic music. Using modern casual dress is simply distracting. Let the audience come up to you and stop trying to stoop down to them. Stop trying to “reach out” to a younger audience; if they want to hear this music they will want it just as it should be! Traditional!
And “Jack”, you are correct, it was a fine performance musically.
The dogmatism of “authentic performance” practice is most unfortunate. The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is not the Academy of Ancient Music. Likewise the Atlanta Symphony Chorus is what it is. They are both superb, versatile ensembles performing an 18th century masterpiece in 2012. It seems to me that Maestro Spano followed a musically reasonable course, choosing to incorporate some aspects of “authenticity” into the performance to good effect, but at the same time taking advantage of his forces’ traditional strengths . That approach was entirely valid and worked quite well, despite the technical problems cited in other comments. Indeed, if Mr. Marcus truly found listening to the duet between Kelly O’Conner and David Coucheron “painful,” I would suggest that his well informed devotion to authentic Baroque performance practice has worked to his disadvantage. Those sounds to my ears were as exquisitely sublime as one could ever want to hear, and I sure am glad I heard them.
I enjoyed the concert, and so did my mom, but there were certainly some big flaws that took away from the overall experience. I don’t understand why, with all the lighting available, they chose to use the same lights for the gobos on the stage as for the spotlights. Every time a spot was needed, the gobo flashed and moved to the correct spot. It would have been a cool effect accept for the garish flash, particularly when it happened during a slow or soft part. The stand lights for the orchestra went out at one point which was also distracting, but I guess that can be written off as an error? I agree with one of the above posters that they got off from each other at one point, and the soloist coming in early (and not covering it very well), but that’s what makes live performances interesting. My mom loved the violin solo, but I found it out of context as well.
I think though the worst thing of the night happened during the crucifixion scene. The middle of the “crosses” was supposed to gracefully rise up, but what actually happened because it wasn’t properly hung or secured was that it wavered back and forth, twisting around, looking like exactly what it was: a couple of 2x4s being raised by a crane on a construction site. It was so comical, I heard a couple of snickers from the people around me. Not exactly the effect you were going for I assume.
I love when the ASO tries to add effects and visuals to a piece of music, in fact, I’m looking forward to the Holst Planets concert, but if they end up taking away, I’d rather just hear the music.
Ooops – Mr. Paulk did indeed mention Heidi Grant Murphy and I like his descrption, “Her voice is not huge, yet it manages to project to each seat”; I would add that it made for a nice blend with the orchestra, with both completely audible.
I’m not sure if “Yes, but” should be the title to a review of the Saturday performance or simply the title to a rebuttal to Jim Paulk’s view of the Thursday concert. It was a wonderful but flawed performance of St. Matthew’s Passion last night. The chorus had fantastic diction, unity, pitch and sound. Thomas Glenn as the Evangelist was both charismatic and dead-accurate muscally and physically. He has a wonderful voice and although he sings a very wide range of styles (he won a Grammy earlier this year for his performance of Dr. Atomic), his timbre and styling was perfect for this piece. Great lighting, great set design, and great choreography. But some significant flaws and weaknesses kept the sublime out of reach of the wonderful although it was peeking out ever now and again. Still, a great evening and a work of this scope is hard as hell to pull off perfectly.
The biggest complain was authenticity of style. Most of the soloists were, simply, poor as far as Baroque performance was concerned. While they had a nice almost Wagnerian sound, this wasn’t Wagner. Robert Shaw never preented Baroque music in an authentic style and the ASO has never gotten over that part of his legacy. I’ve spent most of the last 20 years trying to avoid their Bach and unfortunately I wasn’t surprised last night. The winds sound fairly pure but the strings were, well, lush. The contrast between the sound of the viola d’gamba soloist and the rest of the strings was unfortunately great. Much much worse, in an extended duet with one of the singers, the solo violin sounded like he was playing Brahms–it was painful. The ASO is a great orchestra and these days the winds are especially wonderful, but I wish that the orchestra would re-learn their approach to Baroque music.
There were also technical issues that made me wish the orchestra and soloists had been able to have a couple of more rehearsals. For instance, one of the two orchestras got off a beat during one part. Understandable as they probably had dificulty in hearing each other but not terribly forgivable. Mr. Spano used the clearest conducting possible and they kept almost geting back together, then veering apart. In another example, the soprano (Heidi Grant Murphy, who Mr. Paulk doesn’t mention at all) came in 4 bars early at one point (which hey, happens) but it threw her and she was shaky and without much power all night until an absolutely sublime solo towards the end. Mr. Spano was again focussed on conducting the orchestra and chorus rather than following soloists (did the same thing in a piano concerto a couple of months ago) and that too caused some mush.
In general a very wonderful night that had sublime clearly in its sights but in general didn’t quite make it.
You are spot on Sue. I was truly blown away by this stunning performance. Thanks to all involved.
This re-creation of Bach’s soulful communication almost 300 years ago reminds every listener of the universal impact of its message. I listened enthralled and grateful. Thanks to Jim Paulk for relaying some of its power in this review. The concert really needs to be experienced to be believed.