J.S. BACH

St JohnPassion

Leipzig Rundfunkchor

Staatskapelle Dresden

Peter Schreier

The writer on this piece in 1001 Classical Recordings You Must Hear Before You Die rightly identifies the ceaselessly contemporary quality of the opening chorus to Bach’s Passion setting from 1724, ‘cross-cutting between stabbing pleas for mercy and relentless counterpoint like a CNN rolling news story on the world’s dispossessed’. This quality is rarely so apparent in recordings as it is in Peter Schreier’s set from 1987. Under Schreier, the brusquely immediate economy of utterance peculiar to the St John has never come into so sharply focused a contrast with the ruminately contemplative St Matthew.

Having sung and recorded Evangelists for conductors as diverse as Karl Richter and Herbert von Karajan, Schreier (an alumnus of the Leipzig Thomanenchor in Bach’s charge two centuries earlier) decided to go it alone. In concert this presented (Schreier retired almost a decade ago now) a unique, astonishing sight: choir and soloists behind him, instrumentalists in front, there he stood, facing the audience, all in black, no baton or music-stand in sight, for over two hours (three in the case of the St Matthew), as tenor soloist, Evangelist, conductor, the very embodiment of the old Leipzig Kantor, channelling the spirit of Passion text and music with unfailing drama. His recordings offer a two-dimensional but nonetheless estimable reflection of this lost phenomenon.

As a bonus, Schreier and his team (with starry soloists including Roberta Alexander, Olaf Bär and Robert Holl) recorded three arias from the rescension of the Passion which Bach made for a revival in 1727.

‘Schreier goes all out for dramatic intensity and continuity; and his Evangelist, far from standing outside the action as an objective narrator, is caught up in the diverse emotions of the story (pacing his recitatives with great flexibility)… The chorales are flowingly and sensitively sung, the choruses very secure though mostly very fast and, in the personification of the mob, vividly howling for bloodlust.’

Gramophone, December 1988

Newton Classics 2cds 8802052