Dunedin Consort: Bach – St John Passion
St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral - 16/03/24
A performance of Bach’s St John Passion is one of the most anticipated events of the Easter period, and we have become accustomed to the excellence of those given by the Dunedin Consort in Edinburgh over the last decade or so. The performance tonight in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral was indeed excellent, and was warmly received by a large audience, who had braved the elements, and the disappointment of Scotland’s loss to Ireland in the Six Nations, to be there. It wasn’t perfect, and I will explain why anon, but I want to report that this was a moving and beautifully performed account of Bach’s magnificent work.
First performed in St Nicholas’ Church in Leipzig 300 years ago, on 7th April 1724, it is sometimes overlooked in comparison with its much longer and weightier companion piece, the St Matthew Passion. This is to do it a disservice, as it is as wonderful a score as the Matthew, but quite different both in scope and in complexity.
I have been singing the Passions for over 40 years, usually as Christus, but sometimes singing the arias and occasionally, like tonight, the choruses as well in eight voice ensemble versions. I recorded the Matthew with the Dunedin Consort in 2007 (Linn CKR313), and in the 1980s and early 90s, I sang all over Germany in an 8 voice version with Ensemble Contrapunktus.
The version we heard tonight was with eight voices, singing all parts and choruses, and a small chamber orchestra of 13. The programme announced that it was to be directed by Nicholas Mulroy, who was also John the Evangelist. This was slightly odd, as Mr Mulroy did not, at any point, seem to be directing anything, which was in itself not entirely surprising, since he sang all the arias and the chorales as well. It may be that, in rehearsal, he set the tempi and conveyed his wishes to the other performers, but having got used to the very dynamic conducting from harpsichord and chamber organ of the Dunedin’s Music Director, John Butt, over the years, this came as something of a dramatic change, and I’m not sure it was one for the better. One could not say that any of the ensemble was at all sloppy, but I got the impression of a slightly rudderless ship on occasions, as solos and choruses came and went with no obvious direction. In his position as Evangelist, Mr Mulroy had control of the basic roadmap of the Passion, and with his effortlessly smooth and beautiful singing, from memory, he dominated the story telling and the pace of the recitatives, and in that respect could be said to be directing the performance. I still would have liked an overall conductor, simply to keep everything under one person’s control.
St Mary’s Cathedral, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone this year, is a wonderful and spacious building, with a lovely acoustic, but I’m not sure it was the right place for such a small scale performance of the Passion. Things improved during the work, but the first chorus, ‘Herr, unser Herrscher’ was distinctly underpowered vocally, as a lot of the voices and the words were lost in the huge spaces above the consort. Even a small baroque ensemble makes a fair bit of noise, and it was asking a lot of some of the voices to penetrate the huge nave. To be fair, the Consort had fallen foul of the notorious railway line between London and Edinburgh (they performed in London on Friday), and only arrived in Edinburgh at the last minute, so balance rehearsals must have been minimal. Nonetheless, I felt that the composition of the eight singers was not well suited to St Mary’s.
Four were singers who regularly sing in small consorts around Britain, particularly the Marian Consort, and so their raison d’etre is to blend seamlessly into a homogenous musical ensemble.
When I sang with the German Contrapunktus, we were all eight practised soloists in our own right, used to projecting into big auditoriums and cathedrals, singing arias and large scale works. We shared out all the solos in the John Passion (I sang Christus and chorus, while my colleague sang the arias, small characters and choruses – I got the better deal!) and Tenor One, Gerd Türk, sang the Evangelist while his colleague sang the arias.
In the Dunedin performance, Nicholas Mulroy sang the Evangelist and all the arias, while his two tenor colleagues sang only chorus and two or three short lines of recitative. Stephan Loges sang Christus, all the arias and the choruses, while his colleague sang Peter and Pilate and the choruses. Anna Dennis sang all the arias and choruses and one character, while her colleague sang only chorus and Beth Taylor sang her two arias and chorus, and her colleague sang only chorus. All the singers were excellent, but the distribution seemed to me to be unbalanced, especially in St Mary’s. We also had the odd situation of Jesus dying on the cross, to be elaborately mourned by Beth Taylor in the wonderful aria, ‘Es ist vollbracht’, only to pop up full of beans to sing the bass aria, ‘Mein teurer Heiland’ straight away. Surely, the excellent Robert Davies could have sung that aria?
Nicholas Mulroy is one of the finest Evangelists anywhere in the world at the moment, and his singing was superb throughout, in almost flawless German and from memory. He has a naturally high lying voice, which he uses with extreme skill, and his interpretation and diction are wonderful. It was a privilege to hear him in this role, and he has the perfect voice for the Evangelist.
The other stand out voice tonight was the mezzo-soprano, Beth Taylor, particularly in her second aria, ‘Es ist vollbracht’ which I mentioned above. EMR readers will know that Beth and I often sing together in recitals (indeed we will be singing a Schumann recital in the Edinburgh Festival in August – watch out for details), but I want to make clear here that I am being entirely objective in saying that Beth has one of the best mezzo/contralto voices I have ever heard. Most observers were of the opinion that she was good enough to have won Cardiff Singer of the World last year, and I am not going to disagree. Her moving performance of the aria, which mourns Christ’s death but anticipates his resurrection, was the highlight of the evening for me, superbly accompanied on Viola da Gamba by Jonathan Manson, who was magnificent throughout the concert. Mr Manson, from Edinburgh, is one of the world’s finest baroque cello and gamba players, who has performed frequently with the wonderful Trevor Pinnock. His rock solid continuo playing was fabulous, working well with the leader, Matthew Truscott and the organist, Stephen Farr. In fact, the whole orchestra was superb, if occasionally too loud, especially at the beginning.
I was very impressed too by the soprano Anna Dennis, who sang ravishingly in her arias, with a clear well-produced tone and a voice of ethereal beauty.
All in all, it was a fine performance, heartily applauded by the large audience. Another of our reviewers will be at the forthcoming St Matthew Passion, since, having sung in the Dunedin’s recording 14 years ago, I don’t feel I should review it, although I would encourage you to buy the recording. It’s brilliant!
