A sadly apathetic ‘Judas Passion’
By the very nature of the enterprise, a period-instrument ensemble like the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra is going to devote nearly all of its attention to the music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. So the rare occasions when the group turns to contemporary fare take on added significance.
It was that heightened sense of the moment that made Philharmonia’s season-opening concert in Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall on Wednesday night, Oct. 4 — featuring the U.S. premiere of a newly commissioned work by Scottish composer Sally Beamish — an even more grievous disappointment than it would otherwise have been. This wasn’t simply an offnight romp through Handel or Mozart; it was a chance, sadly squandered, to make a meaningful addition to the repertoire for early music ensembles.
The trio of vocal soloists all performed yeomanly labors.
The work in question was “The Judas Passion,” and on paper it looked entirely promising. Any new setting of the Passion story represents a clear connection with a long artistic tradition that is bread and butter to an organization like Philharmonia, and recasting the familiar story from the point of view of Judas seemed like a revisionist and potentially revelatory version of familiar material.
The results, unfortunately, were neither revelatory nor even particularly modern. David Harsent’s libretto sidestepped nearly every opportunity to reinterpret the moral dimensions of the material, and Beamish’s 70-minute score proved so resolutely and unwaveringly stolid in its pacing that any possibility of dramatic excitement quickly vanished.
That left the onus on Music Director Nicholas McGegan and his performing forces to do what they could with the assignment. Eleven members of the Philharmonia Chorale brought eloquent focus to a range of assignments as crowds or individual characters. The trio of vocal soloists — tenor Brenden Gunnell as Judas, baritone Roderick Williams as a sonorous Jesus, and especially soprano Mary Bevan in a radiant and blazingly forceful performance as Mary — all performed yeomanly labors.
But they had little enough to work with. Aside from a handful of telling orchestral passages, in which she used the resources of the 18th century instruments to create eerie or shimmery textures, Beamish’s writing did little to create any sense of character or dramatic momentum.
Each scene sounded exactly like the one before, cast in the same austere recitatives and moving at the same dull, unflagging pace. Mary’s use of the same opening melody at every juncture seemed at first like a welcome character note, but quickly devolved into monotony.
And if Harsent had anything of moment to convey about the character of Judas, it was difficult to discern. Great swatches of the libretto (Peter’s betrayal, Christ’s appearance before Pilate) are distinguishable from the traditional story only in the pedestrian poverty of their language.
Elsewhere, Harsent’s revisionism didn’t extend far beyond lines that wavered on the question of whether Judas’ actions were inspired by God or the devil. To the traditional belief that Judas is the villain of the Passion story, “The Judas Passion” responds with a bland “Yeah, but is he, though?”
The first half of the program was devoted to the Suite No. 1 in E Minor from Telemann’s “Tafelmusik,” in a sleek and shapely rendition that successfully got the audience members in a Baroque frame of mind. Solo turns by flutists Stephen Schultz and Janet See, cellist William Skeen and violinist Lisa Weiss were among its many pleasures.