Passion

"The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the greatest works in the history of music. Whenever I study this epochal composition, I always ask myself the question: How can a work of music, which is performed each year in thousands of performances, has been scientifically and artistically interpreted for decades, and worshiped for centuries, remain a new, contemporary, and at the same time universal and supreme idea?It can be achieved if that which is defined as established and comprehensive, and appears or is accepted as unshakeable, is set in motion without capping the connections to the work itself and its musical- historical, intellectual and theological foundations." says Hans-Christoph Rademann about one of the monumental sacred works of music history. In November 2020, Rademann and the Gaechinger Cantorey ensemble and chorus, together with an extraordinary group of soloists, set out to lend a new and fresh perspective to Bach's timeless masterpiece of raging choirs, intimate chorales, and emotionally charged arias, which, with its drama and pictorial quality, allows the listener to experience the well-known Passion story again and again as something completely new and unheard-of.

This release celebrates the 300th anniversary of Handel's great Brockes-Passion: a long-neglected masterpiece by this most brilliant composer. Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music are joined by a stellar line-up of soloists in this recording, the culmination of two years of scholarly research. To create its new edition of the score (Handel's original being long-lost), the Academy of Ancient Music assembled a team of scholars and musicologists from the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, King's College London and more, to work alongside Music Director Richard Egarr and editor Leo Duarte.

The discovery in St. Petersburg of a full libretto from the second performance in 1744 of Bach’s missing 1632 Passion set the sleuths to work. And here’s the result: Following this revised edition, a full-length creation emerges, the work of Jordi Savall based on research by German harpsichordist/musicologist Alexander Grychtolik. The music, all by Bach, has been borrowed from a host of different places, including the two surviving Passions and some cantatas. Savall’s lively musical instincts and his flair not just for reconstruction, but also for imbuing it with vigorous life make this mandatory listening, especially given the quality of the performance.

On occasion of the 300th anniversary of the first performance of Handel’s Brockes-Passion in Hamburg (4 April 1719), Accent present a 2017 live performance at the Göttingen Handel Festival with Laurence Cummings conducting the Festivalorchestra Göttingen, the NDR Chor and an excellent cast of singers such as the Dutch soprano Johannette Zomer and the young German tenor Sebastian Kohlhepp (as Evangelist). Barthold Heinrich Brockes’ passion text is one of the most frequently set in the history of music and was the only German text used by George Frideric Handel as the basis for a large-scale sacred composition. The original score was lost but the surviving version, which was hand-copied by Johann Sebastian Bach, makes it possible for us to hear this 1719 oratorio today.

The Concerto Copenhagen is Scandinavia’s most renowned Baroque ensemble and one of the most innovative such formations worldwide. Its trademarks are its unusual program combinations featuring Scandinavian rarities and famous Baroque masterpieces. This world-class orchestra now turns to Handel’s great Brockes-Passion in a CD recording based on the Halle edition of this composer’s works. The Passion text published by the well-to-do Hamburg resident Barthold Heinrich Brockes was a literary bestseller during the early eighteenth century. Composers set his poetic text, the first to add narrative elements to the Biblical Passion texts, more than thirty times.Today the best-known of these compositions is the one by George Frideric Handel, who set these verses to music in 1716, creating what would remain his only sacred work in German. Stylistically, however, the Brockes-Passion prefers to follow Italian models and speaks a musical language resembling that of the Baroque opera.

This recording was made in April 2019 at the Ernest-Ansermet Studio in Geneva, after five concerts in Switzerland during the preceding days. The desire to be as faithful as possible to the rhythm of the drama of the Passion and to the evidence of the musical sequences, which is easier to feel during a live performance than in front of the relative abstraction of the microphones, as well as a non-negligible time constraint (three and a half days in the studio for a work of 160 minutes), pushed us to record long takes, sometimes including up to 10 or 12 minutes of music, thus getting as close as possible to the feeling of a concert.

On the present double album the ensemble ‘La Protezione della Musica’ directed by Jeroen Finke tackles the St Matthew Passion by Johann Cyriacus Kieling (1670–1727). This work is in a very emotional style, containing numerous short yet expressive arias, descriptive recitatives and virtuoso choruses. In its structure it anticipates the monumental, High Baroque settings of the St Matthew Passion by composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach. After hearing this world première recording the listener will look forward to further projects from this ensemble.

Telemann wrote a total of 46 passions, of which this is the most beautiful in regard to the treatment of the choral movements and arias. It was written in 1730 and displays an especially illustrative compositional style. The chorales are conceived of as congregational singing.

Bach and Pymalion: history of a passion; and the exploration of inner drama associated with the brilliant cantor, as well as the constant refinement of the art of singing. A milestone in this 15-year relationship is the new recording of the St. Matthew Passion with Raphael Pichon at the helm of an extraordinary ensemble of singers and musicians, convincing in the precision and seriousness of the accomplished work. This reading is about a tragedy at once intimate and theatrical, human and metaphysical, in five acts.