Customer Reviews

Bach - Johannes-Passion / Schlick · Wessel · de Mey · Türk · Mertens · Kooy · ABO · Koopman

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In The Netherlands, a very Bach-loving country, Ton Koopman is regarded as 'Mr. Bach'. If you haven't heard performances of Bach's music by Koopman before, this John Passion is a great way to start acquiring a Koopman addiction. His approach is not very idiosyncratic (as was Harnoncourt's), but it is definitely 'authentic' and concentrated, in a way that pays properly due to musicality and emotion. The sound in this recording is highly transparent, but not dry. The tempi are such that you can follow both the passion story unfold and Bach's musical lines develop. Right from the start the strings and wind instruments will catch your breath and Koopman won't leave you alone for the next two hours. If you are looking for 'the best performance' of the John Passion, you should defnitely not leave Koopman's contribution from your wish list.

The articulation and emotion of this performance is wonderful. If you are looking for an authentic recording of one of Bach's greatest works, then this one is for you! You might also check out the other recordings of Bach done by Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque.

It's hard to go wrong with Koopman. This is a beautiful recording, with great sensitivity shown in many finely wrought and shaped musical phrases. (By the way, don't buy ANY John Gardiner Bach, they are absurdly too fast in tempi, articulated like a loud ticking clock, and phrases are rarely shaped.) This may be the best available recording of this wonderful work, which has been neglected in the shadow of the St. Matthew Passion. The other fine version is by Karl Ritcher, I believe.
But you will not regret buying this marvelous one.

This Passion, like all Passions by J.S. Bach are church operas without any setting. The story is a real plot. The use of voices and chorus are operatical. The lyricism of the music and the singing is undeniable. We are here in total continuity with old biblical operas from the Midlle Ages and the Renaissance. The first important element is that Bach finds a refuge and a compensation in his music for the hardness and hardships of his life : the loss of a job, the next job which is far from being ideal and good in Leipzig, the mercantile city that is not exactly art-minded, the loss of a wife and his second wife who has to drop her singing career. Bach is thus personally motivated in his depicting of the suffering of Jesus. The second element is the tremendous fluidity of the language and the use of the music of the German language of the text to sustain and enhance the music itself. At this level we can even hear from time to time what will be characteristic of the great German deeply sombre and dramatic operas of the 19th century, from Beethoven to Wagner or even further on. I will not cover all aspects of this Passion but I will insist on two particular levels. Bach punctuates his Passion with the use of the chorus and this chorus gives the deep meaning of the Passion itself. This Passion has often been accused of being antisemitic. If we listen to the chorus carefully, we are far from that. The chorus is used in four different directions. First it takes the form of a psalm of a hymn and it opens to some kind of heavenlike reflection by the modern audience. Second it represents the crowd of the Jews or the High Priests. Then it becomes a chaotic canon or fugue on a popular music that wants to express the frenzy of the crowd, to illustrate the famous saying of Jesus : « Forgive them father because they do not know what they are doing ». This crowd is beside themselves, they have lost their selfcontrol. They are irresponsible. Third it may even represent the joy of a modern and popular crowd in front of the realization of the prediction like in « Sei gegrusset, lieber Judenkönig ! ». Finally it also represents the soldiers for example sharing Jesus's clothes. Then it expresses greed and totally unconscious brutality or beastlike cecity. There is no accusation against the Jews. They were manipulated by the high priests, by Pilate, and they also were out of their minds, in other words carrying out God's decision without knowing it. This explains the very strange declaration: « Der Held aus Juda siegt mit Macht, and schliesst den Kampf ». Jesus is a hero, Jesus wins the battle, Jesus conquers power and Jesus ends the fight, which means he gets the world on his side at the very moment of his death. No antisemitism at this moment since the fight is finished, hence there is no reason to fight against the Jews any more. And that's what the « Ruht wohl » means and expresses in a beautiful Tenebrae turned upside down into a lullaby, transforming the descent into darkness of the Tenebrae into an ascent into light of this famous piece of music and singing. Death becomes a desired passage from strife to calm humility and submission to the longed-for liberation and regeneration. In other words Bach is calling for peace on earth, peace and order, in Germany like elsewhere, human reasonable governing of things after the long period of war that is just in the process of coming to a close. Bach is a pacifist and a social peacemaker at the end of an extremely troubled period.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

The recording is excellent in every regard - audio fidelity, interpretation, quality of the chorus and soloists. Delivery from vendor was prompt. A very pleasing transaction.

This Saint John Passion is an essential work by Johann Sebastian Bach. Here, the action is concentrated on the « sacrifice », from the arrest to the crucifixion ; here Jesus is using arguments to defend himself and some arguments are very strong, such as the one he uses with the servant who slaps him, asking him why he did not denounce him when he was preaching in the temple, which shows the present slap is nothing but a hypocritical gesture to capture the attention and maybe reward of the High Priests. But what is essential after this characterization of Jesus, is the supposed anti-semitic content of this Passion. This is totally wrong. The chorus must be analyzed in details and it shows how this chorus speaks in the name of three groups of people. First the Jewish Crowd, but a Jewish crowd manipulated by the High Priests into some frenzy, some unconscious mass reaction which will later justify Jesus's words : « Forgive them, Father, they don't know what they are doing. » Second the High Priests, and those know perfectly well what they are doing : they are trying to lure Pilate into taking a decision in their place so that they will not be responsible for it, if by any chance Jesus was really the son of God. At the same time they are subservient with Pilate and they try to save their power and their privileges by supporting the Roman Emperor, through supporting Pilate, his representative. They are the real criminals because they are hypocrites and servile flatterers. They do not think of God or the prediction of a Messiah. They want to be the only ones to decide who the Messiah will be, and right now it is not a good thing to have one because that would anger the Emperor. So they manipulate the crowd to force Pilate to decide the crucifixion in their place. Thirdly the Roman soldiers are nothing but pawns on the military and political chessboard. They carry no responsibility in the crime. But furthermore, this approach represents an attempt by Saint John to alleviate the responsibility of the crowd because in his attempt to build up a church he needs them as new members. In his attempt to conquer religious power and then eventually, in the long long run, political power, he has to open up this church to everyone, including the misguided Jews. He thinks that Roman Law is right, that no change can come except through the state under the pressure of a mass of people. The music, the singing, the directing shows all that very clearly. It is vain and false to pretend J.S. Bach was an antisemite in this Passion, which does not alleviate at all the antisemitic responsibility of the church itself, and hence the repentance of Pope John XXIII in the sixties and of the church as a whole more recently. The last remark has to do with a comparison with Saint Matthew Passion, where Saint Matthew seems to believe that it is by changing the consciousness of every single man or woman that the world, the society could be changed. Common Law versus Roman Law. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Paris Universities II and IX.

This passion is extremely beautiful, intense and dense. But its starting at the moment when Christ is arrested erases from the story the last supper and the message of optimism about the future that comes before and along the trial. It also erases a great part of the prophecy that comes from the Old Testament and that is spoken by Christ, both a prophecy that says what he is going to suffer, and a prophecy about what his own suffering is going to bring to the world. What's more Jesus is extremely pugnacious in this passion. He defends himself, he uses logical arguments to prove his point and his innocence, and yet he knows it is in vain, but he does not submit without a legal fight. The third element that characterizes this passion is the extreme violence that is imposed onto Christ. It is the only passion, it is derived from the only gospel in which Christ carries his cross. His suffering is by far more explicit and more extreme in this passion that in the three others, in this gospel than in the three others. In this passion those responsible for the death of Christ are clearly identified : they are the High Priests, the members of the Council of the Temple, and particularly Caiphas who feels unrest among the people and wants to prevent it by killing one man as an example. Bach uses his choruses to impersonate the High Priests, the soldiers or the crowd. The music then becomes systematically hysterical expressing political calculation or just frenzy. Ton Koopman uses these choruses in too soft a way : he does not get to the frantic atmosphere they can express : he gives a simple image of mass-disorder. This then justifies the criticism that this passion may be seen as antisemitic, which it is not if the emphasis is put on the political plot of the High Priests and the use by them of the collective frenzy the crowd is driven into by the high priests themselves. What's more and finally, this passion is by far the most dramatic one, the one that uses dramatic means to give life to many scenes, like the arrest, the trial, the crucifixion and what happens from the sixth hour to the ninth hour. We can even think the dialogue is dramatic in a way and is not a plain story told to us. Finally this passion, and the gospel behind, is heavily presented as a direct and eye testimony of what happened and John gives a great quantity of details to emphasize this live rendition of the sacrifice of Jesus and the sadistic opportunistic violence of those who watch and enjoy the show, because it is a show for them.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU