Customer Reviews

Bach: St. John Passion

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What characterizes this performance is drama and tension. There is no need to be concerned with performance practice here. Conrfomity with the edition and time no doubt had its influence. However, the decisions produced a historically smart performance, albeit with modern instruments and a scaled down choir and orchestra for that day. Richter was a hero paving the way for historic performance practice, although he didn't care for period instruments. The result is thrilling. The choral textures are beautifully and skilfully woven, warm when necessary, sinewy and terse when required. The prcision is remarkable. If I remember, from my LP detail, there were 60 in the choir and 45 in the orchestra.

The tenor narative is caringly sung by Enrst Haefliger, one of the best. As a musician and a Christian, I highy recommend this recording. It is a testament of faith.

In his day, Karl Richter was considered a Bach "specialist." We accord that title nowadays, if at all, to purveyors of period performance practice--and rightly so. But there's something to be gained by appreciating earlier conceptions of how this music should go. If you favor a more "traditional" approach to Bach's sacred music, featuring a large chorus, modern instruments and "operatic"-style singers, then you can't do better than Richter's 1964 account of the St. John Passion.

There are few Bach performances on record as compelling as this. Richter's direction evinces a profound understanding of how Bach's theological convictions informed his musico-dramatic treatment of the Passion story. He paces the sacred drama to perfection, particularly in the great trial scene that constitutes the central panel of Part II, in which he allows the intensity to build inexorably as the principal "characters" (the turba being one of them) act out their preordained roles, as in a Greek tragedy. I know of no other conductor who highlights Bach's text-painting so insightfully in such sections as the turba "Wir haben keinen König," the chorale "In meinen Herzens Gründen" or the chorus of Roman centurians casting lots for Jesus' robe (to cite just three among many such instances). Richter's most impressive moment, however, comes at the very end of the piece, with his gradually intensifying, then near-apocalyptic account of "Ach, Herr, lass' dein lieb' Engelein." Once heard, never forgotten.

Richter's noble conception of this work would be ineffectual if he didn't have first-rate musicians to work with. But he does. The Munich Bach Choir, as usual, cover themselves in glory. For such a large group their rhythmic articulation and diction are phenomenal, as is their capacity for realizing the contrasting "affects" inscribed in the various chorale settings interspersed throughout the work. The instrumental ensemble responds with extraordinary precision and élan to Richter's often challenging tempos and careful highlighting of textural detail; obbligati are rendered with expressive phrasing and considerable virtuosity. Among the vocal soloists, Haefliger is a rivetingly dramatic narrator and Herman Prey a warmly human (if occasionally stentorian) Christus. If Lear and Töpper are less than idiomatic Bach singers, they project the texts of their arias with passionate conviction, and that counts for more, in the end, than stylistic accuracy. In the Bass arias, Keith Engen sings expressively, if a bit heavily; "Eilt, ihr angefocht'nen Seelen" is particularly eloquent.

This inexpensive double-CD set is superbly remastered, conveying an even more vivid impression than the original LP's (which I still cherish in their beautifully emroidered Archiv Production box). The acoustic, though roomy, is warm and relatively flattering to the voices.

A mandatory acquisition for "traditionalists" and any listener who is curious about the legacy of this outstanding Bach interpreter.

Karl Richter was known as the pre-eminent Bach interpreter of his time. In this CD, one can see why. The color, depth, and delicate counterpoint of this piece well up from this CD and sweep the listener into the precision and beauty of St. John's Passion.

After 30 seconds of listening to the opening chorus it hit me and I had to rewind to verify: it's the guided tour to the piece. Amazing, I have never heard any performance of anything that is as much a lesson as it is best-of-class performance. Richter is taking the listener by the hand and explains how the piece works, by performing it with minimal emphasis on different concurrent lines. Polyphony explained, wonders shown, all without words. If you consider yourself both a lover and a student of Bach music (two roles that are probably hard to separate) this is the recording to get.

On my shelf, I have this recording next to Gardiner's Christmas Oratorio. Matter and antimatter, you say? I don't think so. Simply put, this performance is musically convincing and a joy to listen to; it does not suffer from the ponderous tempi that hurt Richter's later work, and packs a wonderful dramatic punch. Kudos especially to Haefliger; his performance of "Ach, mein Sinn" gets me every time.

There is one small defect: the fermatas in the chorales are uniformly held long. This sounds great in "O grosse Lieb" but cuts into the choir's momentum in a couple of the other chorales. Otherwise, a brilliant performance.

Your attention is grabbed and sustained from the moment the woodwinds begin in the haunting opening measures of the first chorus. This version is incredibly presise ad skillyfully executed--the best of the best!

Yes, I would rate a 10 instead of a 5 because it is the best St. John Passion ever recorded to this day, even better than John Eliot Gardiner's recording and others that I own.

Its better sounding, better choir, and the arrangments are good too. It Sounds of what Bach would have wanted to sound.

The music sinks to the heart of Lutheranism

I hold no brief against the reviewers who love Karl Richter's 1964 St. John Passion, but so far nobody has much bothered to describe what it sounds like, which is solemn. Until the period instrument revolution, Bach was a church composer, and church musicians like Karl Munchinger, Karl Forster, and Richter claimed the territroy of cantatas, masses and passions. Only occasionally did a great conductor like Klemperer or Karajan step in (none of them except for Hermann Scherchen recorded a St. John Passion, more's the pity). I was in college wehn this recording appeared, and it was greeted with far less enthusiasm than is expressed here. The feeling around then was that Harnoncourt caught much more of the work's drama and spiritual fervor, while Richter presented us with a marble monument.

The first instrumental introdution gives a good idea of what we're in for: Richter smooths out the counterpoint, reduces accents, and romanticizes the emotional tone. He wasn't a churchy conductor, however, which is all to the good, so the overall feeling isn't musty, but this is fairly operatic Bach (no surprise since the soloists were all opera veterans). The chorales are slow, reverential, and darwn out at the end of each cadence.

Of course, romatnic is a relative term. For its day, this reading wasn't considered romantic compared to Bach performances from Furtwangler and Klemperer, nor was it as daring as those from Hermann Scherchen, who is more a pre-period avatar than Richter the Kapellmeister-scholar ever was. In any event, this is an enjoyable reading of the St. John Passion that will appeal to listeners who don't demand much drama but love impeccable technique. Traditionalists should seek out a roughly contemporary reading under Wolfgang on EMI that benefits form the incomparable Evangelist of Fritz Wunderlich.

I went through a stage in college where I listened to St. John's Passion all the time, and I became interested in every version I could find-- I did a lot of poking around my college's music library. If you like Bach's passions for their drama, then this is the best recording out there. It conveys a sense of urgency and power that other recordings lack. Almost fifteen years later, I can listen to it-- especially the opening and towards the end, Evelyn Lear singing Zerfliesse, Mein Herze, and the music is so sweeping, so powerful, that I get chills up my spine. This is what choral music is meant to do.

This version of the St John Passion is indeed a revelation. The singers all sing with clarity and great beauty and the whole effect is of a magnificent seamless tapestry of sound

The closing chorus "Ruht wohl" is so moving that I was reduced to tears. I have sung this Passion as a chorus member and that was, at that time, the most emotionally moving thing tha I had ever done, but listening to this magnificent recording of it has taken me a stage further into appreciation of the genius of Bach and the wonder of the human voice