I saw Phillippe Herreweghe conduct one of Bach’s Passionen maybe 25 years ago in Rio. It was a concert that made every member in the audience feel directly involved in the passion of Christ (which is exactly what Bach had in mind). After the performance, I had the opportunity to talk to the cellist in the orchestra and she said that she was not very inspired by the look of the hall, but the moment they started to play and sensed how good the acoustics were she knew it would be a good concert. And this takes us to the theme – Bach choral works in concert halls.
Everything about performing Bach is particular, but I can’t help believing that no other music is so sensitive to acoustics as the work of Bach. The challenges of conducting the Matthäus-Passion for a large audience have been dealt with since the first time it was performed in those conditions by Mendelsohn. You basically use a large orchestra, chorus and soloists with big voices. The problem is that, in the end, it sounds rather like Beethoven. That is why musicians like Harnoncourt and Leonhardt realized you should scale back to the sound picture Bach himself had in mind when he composed these pieces – original instrument, historically informed practices, a smaller chorus and soloists with notion of how one sang before Manuel García etc, etc. Since HIP performances have become the standard for this repertoire, we have been confronted with the puzzling experience of hearing orchestras like the Collegium Vocale Gent in places intended for the Berlin Philharmonic to play Wagner. And, well, when this happens, the thrill is largely gone. It feels small-scaled, distant and one barely hears the vocal soloists. As I like to make things more complicate, I’ll mention that I did listen to the Matthäus-Passion in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig and it wasn’t optimal either. But let’s go back to the Tonhalle. If I am not mistaken, the inaugural concert in Zurich’s prime orchestra hall featured the music of Gustav Mahler. Even if I am indeed mistaken, I can tell you the hall was not designed for Bach. Even if this evening’s performance was a very good one, the experience of feeling part of the drama was largely lost due to the clear acoustic separation between stage and audience.
Once you adjusted to the fact that you were looking at it rather than being at it, the performance had many assets. It was conducted from a true baroque perspective, with clear dance rhythms, swift accents and a sense of story telling. Some would say it was too fast – and I am tempted to say that at moments I would agree. In O mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß, I’d rather feel the effect of the repeated-note phrases in the orchestra, as in Herreweghe’s own recording for Harmonia Mundi. Also, in Erbarme dich, a little bit more time to let the music sink in would have transformed something beautiful in something moving – and the violin solo would have sounded less spasmodic too. On the other hand, the rushed approach made for a dramatic opening number and a rightly uplifting Mache dich. The gamba solos alone were worth the ticket price – rarely have I heard them at once so illustrative of the text and also played with such virtuoso quality. And the 3 per part (soloists included) choruses plus ripieni sang with clarity of tone and precision. That said, numbers involving solo voices and the chorus simultaneously, especially So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen, simply misfired. The soprano and alto too much in retreat and the chorus tiptoeing is the opposite of the kind of impact we expect from a number like that.
With few exceptions, all the very good singers this evening sounded a bit lost in the hall acoustics and a bit hard to hear in their lower registers. The very expressive and stylish Dorothee Milds, not in her freshest voice today, could only show her credentials in Aus Liebe, because the tessitura was congenial, enabling her to produce some lovely floated sounds. Grace Davidson sang Blute nur with great charm, maybe too much charm considering the theme of the aria, and yet she too would have benefited of more intimate acoustics. Tim Mead has unusual clarity in his low notes and started from strength in Buss und Reu. At some point he – understandably – lost some steam but recovered for a pure-toned and expressive Erbarme dich. He couldn’t be more contrasted to James Hall, whose whole attitude is rather operatic, the voice a bit higher in range and his singing less echt in terms of style. As I suspected, Handel is rather his cup of tea. Samuel Boden sang Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen with unusual firmness of tone, but the hall was simply too big for him. Both basses were a little bit less challenged by the size of the auditorium. Tobias Berndt has clear divisions and the right naturally dark tone for this music. If his extreme low notes failed to project, this is no exception in singers in this repertoire. Replacing Peter Kooij, Johannes Kammler sang with velvety tonal quality and scaled down to mezza voce without effort. He is clearly a baritone in a bass part, and this was the only thing one could observe about his singing this evening. He offered a clean yet rich toned Mache dich, especially when the tessitura was not too low.
Both singers in the “parts” of the Evangelist and Jesus deserve one paragraph for themselves. I had previously seen Reinoud van Mechelen in his haute-contre duties in Rameau and thought him particularly “heroic” in tone without any sacrifice to lightness of tone. If I have heard more “Schubertian” tenors in this part (Mark Padmore in the concert 25 years ago, for instance), Mr. van Mechelen was vocally really impressive, both in the solidity of his middle and low registers and how his high register simply blossomed in the auditorium. Given his facility, he could let himself go in the more dramatic moments as few other singers in this tricky part these days. Bravo. He was clearly the audience’s favorite this evening. Everybody says baritone Konstantin Krimmel looks like Jesus in a painting by Rubens, but his approach to the text and the music is less predictable than his looks. Anyone expecting the benign nobility of a Hermann Prey this evening was probably shocked with Mr. Krimmel’s almost too human intensity. He spoke to his apostles as a leader, responded to his judges with something close to disdain and faced death with a hint of terror. His voice too is rather in the baritonal range, but the color is rich and one can see that there is reserves of power still not explored there.
I HEAR VOICES 
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