I’ve been preparing for a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the first I’ve sung in for nearly ten years, and only the third I’ve ever been involved in. I know the notes of my part thoroughly as they were drilled firmly in last time, but there are major differences in the forthcoming performance. Firstly, I have a very physical memory of where the notes are at modern pitch, but this performance will be at baroque pitch. Secondly, it’s auf Deutsch.
We have three recordings of this work. Firstly, the venerable Klemperer one on LP. This was one of the few LPs I did not transfer to CD, as I couldn’t imagine myself setting aside the 4 hours to listen to it. The memorable moment is perhaps when Peter Pears sings of Peter’s reaction to hearing the cock crow, and it sounds just like Britten.
On hearing of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s death last weekend, I whipped out our recording of him conducting the Passion (the later of the two recordings) and played it. This was helpful, although I have some reservations; the chorus don’t always sound very involved or (in the crowd scenes) nasty. And while their choral ensemble in Sehet, Jesus hat die Hand is fine, it isn’t keeping the same time as the rest of the performers. Bernarda Fink is just too histrionic for me.
Our third recording is by John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. I have memories of singing for John while at Cambridge (if you’ve been conducted by him, you tend to remember it) but haven’t listened to this recording for a while so don’t want to risk comparing it to Harnoncourt here and now.