On March 19, I was fortunate to be able to attend a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion by the Vancouver Bach Choir at the Orpheum Theatre. I spoke with the soprano, Anne Grimm, beforehand last week, and found the show to be splendid. The Orpheum itself is a beautiful venue and provides a magnificent backdrop for the auditory beauty of Bach’s music and the voices of the choir and soloists.
I wish I had been able to know exactly what was being said the entire time! The program contained only the first lines of each section and an English translation of that line, which enabled me to follow the story more or less, but I was definitely confused at certain junctures about what was happening and what was being said.
As for the story line, St. Matthew’s Passion begins with Christ telling his followers to go into Jerusalem, then they have the Last Supper and Christ informs them that one of them will betray him. Next, Christ grieves in the garden for what he knows is about to happen, and then Judas betrays him. Christ is then interrogated by Pilate, and the performance reached its most emotional part when the choir sang their demands for Christ’s execution. The choir, which sang in German, screaming for capital punishment had a very dramatic effect. Their repetition of Laβ ihn kreuzigen! (Have Him crucified), culminating in Sein Blut komme über uns (His blood be on all of us) is a haunting and dramatic rendering of the emotional energy behind the Passion story.
Next, the story follows Christ on the cross until his last breath, and then ends with grief at his death: Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder (Here at Thy grave sit we all weeping).
Throughout, a soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, bass, and baritone express their emotions. The tenor, Benjamin Butterfield, gave an especially brilliant performance. Butterfield also performed the part of the Evangelist, who acts as sort of a narrator, and I was very impressed by his ability to convey the emotion of the story in that role.
I saw the St. Matthew Passion on the heels of Handel’s Apollo e Dafne, and I confess I found the switch from Handel’s Italian to Bach’s German a bit abrupt; to my ear, Italian sounds beautiful and melodic and German harsh and cacophonous. However, after a while, I became more accustomed to the sound of Bach’s German and it soon became an integral part of the beautiful performance.