MiV
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Royal Theatre
April 3, 2006
This was the second performance of a Bach Passion I have heard in the past two weeks. (See the review of CapriCCio's performance of the St. John Passion on 17 March.) The opportunity to hear two performances in such proximity served to bring out the contrasts between them. The performances were quite different, each with distinctive strengths.
The CapriCCio performance took large steps in the direction of historical performance practices. The VSO produced a more traditional performance: large scale, lush, opulent. In short, compared to CapriCCio, this was more your uncle Leopold's St. Matthew. (Even so, it had some historical elements. Some baroque bows were sprinkled throughout the orchestra and Martin Bonham's viola da gamba made a lovely cameo appearance in Komm, süßes Kreuz.)
It would be ungenerous to compare the two Evangelists since Christopher Butterfield was filling in on short notice. Suffice it to say that Eric Shaw did a marvelous job. The tenor who takes the part of the Evangelist is responsible for maintaining the dramatic and musical continuity of the piece and Shaw did this in spades. He displayed excellent diction and a good feel for the appropriate style.
Peter Butterfield was to have sung the part of the Evangelist in the St. John Passion, but was struck down by pneumonia. He was recovered and able to sing the tenor arias on this occasion, which only served to show how much the audience missed at the earlier performance. I perked right up when he came in with O Schmerz! hier zittert das gequälte. Butterfield inserted some real passion into the Passion. At the same time the singing was clear and intelligent. Only occasional patches of roughness revealed that he had recently been seriously unwell.
Steven Pitkanen did a good job in the role of Jesus. Particularly in the first half of the performance his singing was dramatic and forceful, as he reinforced the words with gestures. (In the second half his singing was a bit more of the "stand and deliver" variety.)
Kendra Colton and Rosemarie van der Hooft were less successful in their roles. Both are good singers, but they did not sing in an appropriate style. (This is a little surprising in van der Hooft's case since she holds an M.A. in Early Music Performance from McGill.) I much preferred the lyric soprano of the young recent UVic graduate Allison Arends in the St. John Passion. Arends never lost sight of the fact that in Bach's Passions, the musicians are telling a story. (In this performance, Arends was consigned to the anonymity of the choir.)
The choir in this performance was just far too big with an ensemble of eighty-six voices. (By comparison, the Monteverdi Choir, in John Eliot Gardiner's celebrated recording of the St. Matthew Passion, employed thirty-six adult singers. CapriCCio's St. John Passion had about thirty choristers.) I understand why the Choir was so large. The Victoria Choral Society does not want to leave anyone out. Still, when such a large choir is employed, the result can be a wall of sound in which rich musical details are lost. CapriCCio was simply a much more supple instrument.
That said, the VCS produced some glorious moments. Some of the highlights included the choir's contributions as the crowd in the scene before Pilate. Large though the choir was, their interventions were forceful and incisive. And sometimes the sheer size of the choir made an impressive grandeur possible, particularly in the final chorus, Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder.
The Victoria Children's Choir appeared only in the opening chorus. They were a delightful addition to the evening. They weren't around at the end to take a well-deserved bow. (I hope that they were at home in bed on a school night.)
The evening afforded an interesting contrast. In parts of the Passion, Bach has the violins take turns participating in the accompaniment. In the aria Erbarme dich, mein Gott it was the turn of concertmaster Pablo Diemecke and the first violins. In accompanying van der Hooft in one of the emotional highlights of the piece, Diemecke employed lots of vibrato. In the aria Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder! associate concertmaster Christi Meyers and the second violins took over. Playing with a baroque bow like some of the others in her section, Meyers demonstrated how to plumb emotional depths without recourse to constant vibrato. The violin playing in this movement was one of the loveliest parts of the whole evening: lyrical, stylish and moving.
The VSO's winds deserve to be singled out for their performances. I have been impressed with them in the past and they again rose to the occasion. Michael Gormley, director of CappriCCio, turned in a fine performance on a lovely positive pipe organ made in Victoria by Grant Smalley.
Of course, Tania Miller deserves to be singled out. Any performance of the St. Matthew Passion is a monumental undertaking. A firm hand and musical vision are required to pull it off. Miller definitely succeeded. The music always had forward momentum and it was evident that a thoughtful musical intelligence was guiding the performance.
We are in Victoria lucky to be able to hear on a regular basis professional performances of such large-scale works as Bach's Passions. Only a city with a large pool of accomplished, dedicated choristers and a community of enterprising musicians makes this possible. Kudos to both CapriCCio and the VSO for their success in bringing these masterpieces to Island audiences.
If anyone wishes to essay Bach's St. Mark Passion this spring, I am quite at my leisure.
MiV
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