Don Satz wrote:

>an adequate soprano soloist.  This time, it's Nancy Argenta.  I don't want
>to be hard on her.  She has one of those "white" voices which I can easily
>be drawn to, but Argenta is not Emma Kirby - not even close.  Argenta's
>voice is not strong and its allure is slight.

Some of her style here may have been at the request of the conductor.
I've heard her here in San Francisco and she tends to use a rounder tone
than Kirkby and with more vibrato.  I really enjoy later-Kirkby, but found
Argenta very good and with a basically more operatic style than Kirkby's
while still very flexible.  So, I suspect there's been an adjustment made
to fit into Suzuki's usual soprano-soloist style.

>Just a few words about the work itself.  Although Bach's B minor Mass
>is often referred to as the crowining musical achievement of Western
>Civilization, I prefer the St. Matthew Passion - more drama and superior
>choral passages.

They're certainly different.  Glad I don't have to make a choice but if I
did it's the Bach B Minor that I'd have with me -- maybe because the choral
segments are more varied (and more interesting to us choral singers) and
the solos a tad more complex - whatever, I found I could listen to the B
minor far longer though both are magnificent.

The American Bach Soloists did the BMinor here so effectively that
instead of a tired audience as you usually see at the end of this piece
(and that I saw when Shaw was here a few years go) the place erupted into
what sounded like a game- ending touchdown response, with foot stomping
and whistling.  It was the most stunning performance I'd ever heard of a
non-staged long work like that.  When they did the St. Matthew Passion,
same group, somehow it didn't hold together as well for us, at least for
sitting quietly through it...

>The opening of Part 1 sets the tone for the work - an inexorable march of
>all of humanity.

I'd like to add something here because that opening IS so stirring and
the Klemperer (which I have) emphasizes the heavy lament, with a kind of
hindsight -- the listeners are aware of what happens and it's summarized in
advance for us in the tempo and weight of that prelude.  I keep this LP set
because it does still stir me.

In the period-performance renditions, the tempo for the opening tends to
be faster, causing some listeners reared on Klemperer to be quite put out
by its seeming shallowness and lack of a feeling of emotional loss.  But in
discussions elsewhere some interesting points have been made and I'll just
post here my own summary of the defense for the newer (to us) approach and
welcome any others' views of course.

The opening, when we read the text carefully, has more to do with the
marketplace than it does a funeral.  It's not so much 'dance' - as some
complain - (though baroque music just tends to be based on dance) but the
pulse of life, and here we have people who are seeing Jesus marched through
the streets but who have no idea why, nor who he is.  What? Who? is the
continuing voiced question.  The movement of daily life is the focus,
interrupted by these interjections, as people going about their normal
day wonder what is going on.

In other words, the opening-scene/play is performed as if we are back
there, in the present, living/re-living that Passion-story, rather than
either remembering the ending of that story or even noting it in advance.

So, rather than the lament we're used to hearing from Klemperer (which I
like), we're hearing something more like a play -- the movement of notes
now based on the text of Bach's composition.  I think this is certainly
a valid interpretation of the music, even if what we're used to is valid
also, in another way - the Klemperer a lamentation based on what we know
is ahead even if the people exclaiming Who? What? have no idea and at this
point in the re-enacted Passion don't care that much.

I wanted to add that my own favorite type of performance of the opening
To the St. Matthew would combine both approaches, as both are found
in the music.  All in minor, and in one of the most beautiful series of
progressions we'll ever hear, we're told that behind the hurly burly and
the bzzz about who that is and what is happening, is a universal horror
story of what man does to its best and how easily we do it.

So, I guess what I prefer is a somewhat less leaden tempo, using instead
the tension of the lines but not short-shrifting the underlying sorrow of
the storyteller, while we also have to hear the sounds of ordinary life,
of innocence and curiosity, of people not yet touched by what is happening

Andrys in Berkeley
http://www.andrys.com/books.html
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