Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) probably is the best appraised composer of all time. He was a true German composer. He lived his whole life in Germany. It is claimed that he never visited other countries. Bach started his career as young as 17-year old when he received an appointment as an organist in the city of Lüneburg. During his life Bach acted also as a music teacher and conductor.At his days in Leipzig, Bach wrote his first large-scale vocal work Johannes-passion. The work is believed to have followed in 1727 by the Matthäus-passion. Matthäus-passion is based on the chapters 26 an 27 of the St Matthew's gospel. It is originally released for double chorus, double orchestra, two organs and solo vocalists. Bach released four years later St Mark's Passion, but unfortunately that work is largely vanished.
Passion has a special place in western music. It describes the passion of The Christ by an
evangelist. There are several composed passions. As mentioned earlier, Johann Sebastian Bach's versions of St John's and St. Matthew's gospel are the best know. Worth of mentioning is also his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel, who has written passions of all the four evangelists.Matthäus-passion has two parts: it starts from the Bethany-prophecy of the Christ and ends to the burial of the Christ. Since it is the most appreciated passion ever, it is also called as the Great Passion.
The year of the first performance of the Matthäus-passion is not full known. There are two possibilities: on the year 1727 or 1729. However, the location is known: it was at St Thomas Church in Leipzig. Matthäus-passion was performed at Vesper on Good Friday and far surpassed anything previously heard in Leipzig. The whole work lasts approximately three and half hours.The Matthäus-passion was not very widely known until Meldelssohn's legendary reviaval of the work in 1829. After that it has been hailed as the greatest setting pf the Passion story in western music.
So, the set-up for performing the work is extremely challenging for any conductor, choir, artists and orchestra. If someone is to take the challenge, Nikolaus Harnoncourt would be the one. Mr. Harnoncourt conducted the performance in Jesuit Church on Vienna's Ignaz-Seipel-Platz on year 2000 for a twelve day period. (I guess that they have been extremly tough days for the artists). Naturally he has selected the top performers for the album: Concentus Musicus Orchestra from Vienna, child choir Wiener Sängerknaben, choir Arnold Schönberger Chor and10 solo vocalists. As mentioned earlier, the performance of the whole work takes approximately three and half hours. Unfortunately in the digital age the performance has been down-scaled to only two hours.When Bach composed the Matthäus-passion, he clearly created it for two choirs. That was something unique at those days. Harnoncourt's performance is largely based on Bach's principles. The Arnold Schönberg Chor has been divided in two. The first section of the choir is at the left hand side and the second part is on the right. Several choral parts are based on the dialogue, where the choir symmetrically builds the musical piece typically starting from the left and continuing on the right. The Wiener Sängerknaben is in between of the choirs, kind of building the highest tones on top of the whole performance. The backbone of the performance are the choirs. Clearly.
The Concentus Musicus Orchestra's role is to support the performance. When the choirs form the backbone, the orchestra is the flesh and blood. Mr. Harnoncourt has been working with the orchestra for several years and that's really audible in the album. The performance itself is not overwhelming - and that's how it need to be. The orchestra plays accurately. At this point I would like to add the role of the organs. The role of the organs is to glue the parts of the Passion together. They clearly support the story sang by the solo vocalists. As mentioned earlier, Bach composed the work for two organs. I am not sure if there were two set of organs in this recording. Usually there's only one set of the organs in the church. The recording has been done in the front part of the church. However, the organs are at the back of the church. I would have expected, that the organs would have been mixed to the surround channels. That would have given a more realistic soundstage of a church. For some reason Teldec engineers haxe mixed the organs to the main speakers. Well... I guess that the reason might be that not all the 5.1 systems have capable enough rear speakers for organs.
The solo vocalists perform their parts extremely well. There were a clear balance in between the solo parts and the whole performance. It was very easy to spot the location of each vocalist from the sound stage. When listening to it in the sweet spot of my system, I could clearly imagine and orchestra in the middle, then three choir sections an the back of the orchestra, but definitely standing higher than the orchestra and finally the solo vocalists on front of them all. Actually, I noticed by accident that the leaflet of the recording contained a photo from the recording. The whole ensemple was set-up exactly how it was in the photo! Good work Teldec!
I've listened this recording for several times during the last seven years. It is my usual "Easter music" and the pearl of my DVD Audio collection. It contains 96kHz/24bit tracks both for 2 and 5.1 channel DVD Audio. Additionally is has Dolby Digital 5.1 for the DVD-Video. I checked the availability of the album. Unfortunately it seems that the recording is sold-out, but Teldec has planned to make a new release of year 2010. If you have a DVD Audio capable player, I strongly suggest to buy the record. On the Amazon, the pre-order price is relatively high (50$!), but you'll never know if it is your last chance to buy this masterpiece.Info box:
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
| Soloist | Bernarda Fink |
| Soloist | Elisabeth von Magnus |
| Soloist | Dorothea Röschmann |
| Soloist | Christoph Prégardien |
| Soloist | Michael Schade |
| Soloist | Oliver Widmer |
| Chorus | Arnold Schoenberg Chor |
| Conductor | Nikolaus Harnoncourt |
| Orchestra | Concentus musicus Wien |
Released | 01/03/2001 |
| Cat Number | 8573-81036-9 (DVD-Audio) |
| Label | Teldec |
| Barcode | 0685738103690 |
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