22-Mar / 1 COMMENTS

Spring is finally here! Between the ever grey days The Hague is so famous for appear some sunny ones that make you feel like everything is good in the world. With spring comes the Passion season- and Holland being Holland, Passion time means first and foremost Bach and his piece de résistance: the Matthew Passion. It’s astonishing how big of a pull the Matthew Passion has here in The Netherlands. Everyone is going, wishing or planning to go some day. Whether it’s from a Christian or a musical zeal, it seems engraved into the national calendar.

Singing in quite a few of them now, I am surprised at how cold or non empathetic the common approach is to performing it. I mean, consider the gut wrenching text and heart breaking music for a moment, and you’ll agree with me that the approach of ”Handle with Care” is not doing this piece any favors . As if human voices and passions should stay away from this piece in case they spoil it.

The great respect for this beautiful piece is rightfully there, but the sleepy way in which it is often expressed is getting us nowhere. Too many times I miss witnessing a variety of expression, of colors and of dynamics, and the audience is asleep, or wishes they would be. It is as if reverence has made us tone down our speech, which tempers with what we deliver to the audience and deludes our message. Music needs its’ performers not just to deliver it and to maintain a tradition, but rather sing it as if for the first time.

“Since Eloquence, which has the great power to persuade us of false things as well as true things, is available to all those who want to make use of it, why is it then that good people do not make the effort to acquire it in defense of the truth?”
St. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, iv libri

Golden Circle Ensemble J.S. Bach John Bakker Michal Bitan St. Matthew Passion