{"id":4003,"date":"2016-03-08T18:02:45","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T18:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/?p=4003"},"modified":"2017-01-28T23:56:51","modified_gmt":"2017-01-28T23:56:51","slug":"three-recordings-of-the-st-matthew-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2016\/03\/08\/three-recordings-of-the-st-matthew-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"three recordings of the St Matthew Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been preparing for a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the first I’ve sung in for nearly ten years<\/a>, 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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/i> is fine, it isn’t keeping the same time as the rest of the performers. Bernarda Fink is just too histrionic for me.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[53,1200,1201,1196,1199,1197,1198],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4003"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4525,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003\/revisions\/4525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}