St John Passion

St Margaret’s Church, Ilkley

This was a thoroughly absorbing performance of the great Bach St John Passion, as Cantores Olicanae, the Yorkshire Chamber Ensemble and a cast of six soloists drew a fairly large audience into the drama and tragedy of the Passion narrative.

The musical director of Cantores, Jonathan Brigg, led a beautifully shaped performance, though the blissful consolatory final chorus Lie Still gave the impression he was a man with a train to catch.

It was 10.15pm by this time: why on earth did they not schedule the start for 7pm? Especially as British Summer Time was about to deprive us of an hour’s sleep!

The heart of any Passion performance is the Evangelist, whose wonderfully varied, expressive and virtuosic recitatives were negotiated with absolute security by tenor Chris Trenholme.

At first he sounded oddly counter-tenorish, but the ear soon got used to his voice and he was a model of clarity in word and pitch throughout.

Both female soloists were excellent. Soprano Helen Strange young and effortless – a joy in I Follow, with obbligato flute, and perfectly ravishing in the later aria with flute and corno da caccia (cor anglais to you and me) O Heart, Melt With Weeping’.

Kathryn Woodruff, the alto, was as expressive as ever, especially in her aria with obbligato cello It Is Fulfilled after the death of Jesus.

The lower voices were less satisfying, Stuart Tomlinson rather mature for the part of Christus, Bo Wang challenged by the anguish of Peter in the wake of his denial, and Quentin Brown recovering from a woolly start to negotiate a virtuosically rapid performance of Haste, Haste, which found the chorus struggling to keep up with their interjections of ‘Where, where?’ (‘Wohin’ in the German original).

The orchestra was excellent throughout (cello and harpsichord continuo players never have a break). The ‘modern’ oboes sounded uncomfortably penetrating in the first alto aria.

The choir were all alert and well balanced in spite of small numbers of tenors and basses and managed their many short turba choruses crisply, adding to the drama of the narrative.

The immense opening chorus (nearly ten minutes long) was splendid, though I thought they were singing in German at first. The edition used had a very different English text from the one I am used to! Altogether an enjoyable and absorbing evening.

Christopher Rathbone