Passion

Barthold Heinrich Brockes wrote a libretto on the Passion of Christ – based on the account in Matthew’s Gospel – which was set to music by many composers of his time, including Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philip Telemann and George Frideric Handel. It is Handel’s version of the latter that the period-instrument ensemble Arcangelo has chosen to present here. Under the direction of Jonathan Cohen, these specialists in the Baroque repertory are joined by the voices of Sandrine Piau, whose numerous Handel recordings are regarded as a benchmark, the tenor Stuart Jackson and the baritone Konstantin Krimmel, recently revealed in a debut recital for Alpha (Saga, ALPHA549). Together they resurrect the operatic splendour of a work that was first performed in 1719 and is thought to have influenced numerous passages of J. S. Bach’s St John Passion, written a few years later.

For nearly 74 years from the death of J.S. Bach in 1750 to Mendelssohn’s fifteenth birthday in 1824 the Matthäus Passion had all but disappeared. Young Mendelssohn’s prized birthday gift - a bespoke a copy of the Passion - was to change music history when five years later he mounted its first performance in the nineteenth century in Berlin. Today it is inconceivable to imagine music without Bach, but in the 1820s his music had been relegated to no more than the exercise-book for students of counterpoint.