Passion on a human scale

Classical Armonico St John’s Smith Square

The Passions of JS Bach are the nearest the great church composer ever got to writing an opera. There’s a constant to and fro between the violent and disorderly story, told in the present tense, and a different, calmer view of the same events seen from eternity’s viewpoint. Some performances magnify that distance; this one made it smaller, by emphasising the human scale of the drama. Nothing was monumentalised; the music’s dance-like pulse was always evident, and the orchestral sound kept a light airy quality. Not all the voices were equally strong, but several shone. Gemma King’s aria in the Trial Scene praising Christ’s sacrifice for mankind had a lovely and unspotted purity. Bass Andrew Davies’s rendition of the famous aria “Mache dich, mein Herze, rein” was warmly affecting. Most striking of these soloists was alto Emma Lewis, who struck a tone of thrilling ripe intensity in her agonised aria “Können Tränen”.

In the midst of all this stood Ian Bostridge (left) as the Evangelist who tells the story. It’s by far the biggest role, and offers the greatest opportunity for emotional expression, as the Evangelist gets caught up in the story. Bostridge seized every opportunity, even to the extent of making a deliberately ugly sound at times. When he referred to “the treacherous Judas”, he made a sound like a snarl. This is fine if the chorus snarls too, when it calls for Barabbas to be crucified, and if the singer playing Christ has a massive calm vocal presence to counteract the hyperintensity. But Andrew Davies didn’t quite have the heft for it, and the chorus were more warmly expressive and compassionate than fierce.

So sometimes things became unbalanced, with Bostridge too violently histrionic for what is essentially a modest role. But this was only an occasional problem in this humane and affecting performance.