La Pasión Según San Marcos

Usher Hall, Edinburgh - 03/08/24

 Joana Carneiro, conductor, musicians from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orquesta la Pasión, Luciana Souza – vocalist, Sophia Burgos – soprano, Reynaldo González Fernández – vocalist and dancer, Pociano Almeida, capoeirista, National Youth Choir of Scotland, Schola Cantorum de Venezuela.

After an opening to the 77th Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) on Friday 2nd August drawing 10,000 people together in a communal event evoking Scottish mythology and history, the opening concert at Usher Hall featured a remarkable, ecstatic and polystylistic musical treat in the shape of Argentinian-Jewish composer Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos.

 Originally written in 2000 to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, La Pasión was appropriately given co-billing as the festival performance opener with the Baroque master’s St Matthew Passion of 1727, reignited through Felix Mendelssohn’s famous revival in 1829.

 Fusing music, movement, dance and drama into an energising whole, Golijov’s treatment of the traditional story of the events surrounding Jesus’s crucifixion deliberately crosses the boundaries between ancient and modern, sacred and secular, religious and political, popular and classical, Latin American and European. Yet it does so in a way that remains both coherent and fresh.

 Weaving itself around texts from St Mark (the earliest canonical gospel text) in translations from local churches and street stalls in Argentina, this vernacular oratorio is propelled through a series of incantational episodes featuring choir, soloists and instrumentalists (principally contrasting brass and strings) by the driving and variegated rhythms of the dexterous Orquesta la Pasión (mixed percussion, Spanish guitar, double bass, piano and accordion). It also draws significantly upon indigenous Latin American stories and poems.

The 100-strong choir splits into asymmetric two and three sections at different points in the one hour 40-minute piece. Both the NYCOS and Schola Cantorum excelled across a huge variety of styles and layers of music. The highlighted soloists are complemented by featured singers coming from, and returning to, the choir stalls – where singing and chanting is accompanied by physical gestures. The voice of Jesus is given to women as well as men, against the machismo of colonial gospel renderings.

The percussionists are situated in front of the conductor, among 25 instrumentalists. They also reposition themselves to achieve a range of acoustic and dramatic effects at different points within the architecture of the piece. Dance and enactment (notably the crucifixion, and the covering of Christ’s body) take place on the left of the stage.

 The music combines a variety of Latin musical styles (Afro-Cuban, Brazilian jazz, flamenco, cumbia, bachata, bossa nova, rumba, salsa, samba and tango) with popular song, hints of plainchant and Handel, Babalawo-style vocalisations, and a brief quotation from the St Matthew Passion.

 It proved an exhilarating fusion, replete with textures, contrasts, elisions and confrontations which project the narrative through re-enactment more than meditation. The powerful yet subtle use of amplification through three sets of speaker stacks enabled the sound to fill the hall without losing detail or overwhelming. Quite an achievement.  

 In both its conception and realisation, this performance of La Pasión beautifully embodied and illuminated the framing theme of the whole Edinburgh International Festival, ‘Rituals That Unite Us’. The many standout moments included the 1983 Argentinian song Todavía Cantamos, dedicated to the mothers of the disappeared during the brutal era of the generals, and the heartrending aria accompanying Peter’s tears upon his denial of Christ.

 Altogether, this was an intoxicating musical and dramatic representation of the Passion story which did justice to its Christian roots while elevating it as a universal tale of persecution, violence, resistance and hope with so many resonances in the world of today. An artistic triumph, fully deserving of its lengthy standing ovation.