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Johann Sebastian BACH (1685 - 1750): "Passionsoratorium" (BWV Anh 169) (ed. Alexander Grychtolik)
Miriam Feuersinger (Zion), Jana Pieters (Maria), soprano;
William Shelton (Seele), alto;
Daniel Johannsen (Evangelist, Johannes), tenor;
Jonathan Sells (Petrus), Tiemo Wang (Jesus), bass
Ripienists; Il Gardellino
Dir: Alexander Grychtolik
rec: August 6 - 10, 2023, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Augustinuskirche
Passacaille - PAS 1152 (© 2024) (90'07")
Liner-notes: E/D/F; lyrics - translations: E
Cover, track-list & booklet
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[ripienists] Heleen Goeminne, Sarah Van Mol, soprano;
Estelle Lucas, contralto;
Jonathan De Ceuster, Pieter De Praetere, alto;
Nicolas Bachau, Simon Erasimus, Emilio Gutierrez, tenor;
Pieter Stas, Bart Vandewege, bass
[IG] Dimos De Beun, Bart Coen, recorder;
Jan De Winne, Christine Debaisieux, transverse flute;
Marcel Ponseele, Lidewei De Sterck, oboe, oboe d'amore;
Gordon Fantini, bassoon;
Joanna Huszcza, Conor Gricmanis, Jacek Kurzydlo, Julie Rivest, Michiyo Kondo, Gabriele Mazzon, violin;
Kaat De Cock, Amaryllis Bartholomeus, viola;
Lea Rahel Bader, Ira Givol, viola da gamba, cello;
Hen Goldshobel, double bass;
Aleksandra Grychtolik, organ
In the Lutheran part of Germany, Passiontide was one of the major episodes in the ecclesiastical year. The Passion and death of Christ, as the only way of redemption for mankind, took a central role in Luther's theology, characterised as theologia crucis. This resulted in a large number of musical settings of the Passion story as told by the four Evangelists. The narrative in their Gospels was the core of such settings until the first half of the 18th century. After 1700 a new genre emerged, known as the Passion oratorio. Rather than the narrative of the Gospels, its core were rather the reflections and the emotional reactions of people around Jesus (or allegorical characters), and even Jesus himself. Some of the libretti included a paraphrase of the events on Good Friday, but others nearly entirely omitted them.
Some composers of the time contributed to both genres, the traditional oratorio Passion and the modern Passion oratorio. A notable example is Georg Philipp Telemann. Johann Sebastian Bach seems to have confined himself to the oratorio Passion. Both his St Matthew Passion and St John Passion as well as the St Mark Passion, whose music has been lost, attest to that. However, there is no reason to conclude that Bach rejected the concept of the Passion oratorio. In Leipzig, he performed Passion oratorios by Telemann and Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, and owned a copy of Handel's setting of the Brockes Passion, the most famous example of the new genre.
The recording to be discussed here concerns a Passion oratorio of the type just mentioned. Bach may have composed, or rather planned to compose, a Passion oratorio of his own.
Since long Bach scholars are puzzled by what happened before Easter 1725. Bach suddenly interrupted his cycle of chorale cantatas, apparently because the (unknown) librettist was not available anymore (for unknown reasons). During the weeks before Easter, no cantatas were to be performed, according to the local regulations (tempus clausus). Bach focused on the Passion performance at Good Friday, but rather than coming up with a new work, he revived the St John Passion, first performed the previous year, with some adaptations. One of them was the opening chorus: a chorale fantasia on 'O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross', which he would insert into his St Matthew Passion in 1727.
It has been assumed that this chorale fantasia was all that was left of a Passion that Bach had planned, but did not compose because of a lack of a librettist, the same that also was responsible for the librettos of the chorale cantatas. However, Alexander Grychtolik suggests that the Passion that Bach had planned to compose was to be based on a libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici, better known as Picander, the poet who also provided Bach with the libretto for his St Matthew Passion. The libretto is included in a collection of librettos which Picander published in 1725.
If Grychtolik is right, the question is why Bach did not compose a new Passion for Good Friday 1725. He refers to 1739, when a performance of the St John Passion met with resistance, and he concludes that something similar may have been the case in 1725 as well. Bach may have decided to perform an adapted version of his St John Passion at very short notice. What speaks in favour of Grychtolik's suggestion is the fact that six parts of the libretto were later incoporated into the text of the St Matthew Passion, such as the aria 'Aus Liebe will ich alles dulden' (Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben) and the chorus 'Wir setzen uns bei deinem Grabe nieder' (Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder).
This, and the fact that at that time Bach regularly worked together with Picander, may indicate that it was Bach who commissioned the libretto. Picander was also responsible for the text of the Easter Oratorio, whose first version was performed that same year. Grychtolik points out the similarity in form of this work and the Passion Oratorio. "[The] Biblical content is not rendered verbatim but is freely set as poetry in the style of a cantata, and the Biblical characters also appear in the arias - quite unlike in the St John and St Matthew Passions; this corresponds to Bach's systematic approach which he pursued throughout the cantata year."
"This recording is intended to demonstrate that Bach had also planned his own contribution to this genre, extremely popular at the time, with Picander's Passion poem", Grychtolik writes in the booklet. But how is that possible as nothing of Bach's music, probably with the exception of the chorale fantasia 'O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross'? It is relevant here to make a comparison with the St Mark Passion. The discography includes several reconstructions of this work, among them one by Grychtolik. It is generally assumed that Bach, for the arias and choruses, made use of material from earlier works. In many cases there is unanimity about the material Bach may have used. In this reconstruction this process is turned upside down. Instead of turning to pre-existing material, Grychtolik selected pieces that are part of pieces written in later years. That is understandable: if Bach did set at least some of the texts from Picander's libretto, he may have used the music for later works. After all, nobody had ever heard it.
The connection of texts from the oratorio with music from later works is a complicated process. Not only needs the poetic structure to fit the text, one also has to take into account the connection between the text and musical figures, which in the baroque era were supposed to match. In some cases an aria has also to be adapted musically, such as 'Aus Liebe' mentioned above. In the St Matthew Passion the soprano is accompanied by a transverse flute and two oboi da caccia. In the Passion Oratorio the aria is sung by Jesus, a role scored for bass. The lower vocal range requires a different instrumental scoring, here oboe d'amore and two viole da gamba. The differences between the texts also ask for some musical adaptation.
Grychtolik also discusses whether Bach had set exactly what Picander had written. He suggests that he did not. Picander's libretto is not divided into two parts - which was common practice in Leipzig, because the first part had to be performed before, and the second after the sermon - and includes only two chorales. Interestingly, a setting of the same libretto from 1729 created in Nurembeg includes more chorales and is divided into two parts. "[The] libretto seems to represent a version of Picander's text that he had specially prepared for publication: the published versions of Picander's texts frequently contain alterations from the versions that Bach had set to music." In this recording two chorales from the Nuremberg version have been included. Picander's libretto does also omit the chorale fantasia 'O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross'. It rather opens with a soprano aria with choir on the text 'Sammelt euch, getreue Seelen'. This is performered in the digital version as a bonus track. The opening with the chorale fantasia is one of Bach's own additions.
It is clear that any attempt to 'reconstruct' this Passion oratorio, assumed to have been written by Bach, is highly speculative. "In view of the lack of further sources it remains unclear whether Bach completed the Passion Oratorio or whether he abandoned it, as he had done with the fourth version of the St John Passion. The version to be heard here represents an attempt to partially reconstruct the Passion Oratorio - one containing the choral sections as well as two to a maximum of four arias - and to present it as a stylistically coherent work. For the remaining Passion arias, movements were taken from other Bach cantatas that fitted the Picander texts in terms of text structure, affect and symbolism (...)". If so little is known for sure, the question has to be discussed whether such a reconstruction makes any sense.
The comparison with the St Mark Passion mentioned above is relevant here. In that case we know for sure that Bach has set the libretto; the latter has also been preserved. In this case, the inclusion of the opening chorale fantasia and some chorales is based on (informed) guesswork. There is also much less evidence about the connection between the arias and music from other works. From that angle, this reconstruction is even more speculative than that of the St Mark Passion. As in the latter work, the largest problem is the creation of the recitatives, either secco or accompanied. The accompanied recitative of Mary (Brechet mir doch nicht das Herz) is largely based on material from the St Matthew Passion, but I assume - the liner-notes don't mention it - that most of them have been written by Grychtolik himself. I find them very convincing, and in accordance with Bach's style.
Whether one find a reconstruction like this one a valuable contribution to the Bach discography is largely a matter of personal opinion. I am a bit in two minds. On the one hand, as I mentioned, this is very speculative, as there is very little to go by. On the other hand, it is instructive to note that Bach did not stay away from the fashion of his time to write and perform Passion music of a more 'personal' nature than his own oratorio Passions. Obviously, that may have been known because of his own performances of Passion oratorios by colleagues, but performing music by others and composing it are two different things. Moreover, musically speaking this Passion oratorio is a good acquisition for the Bach repertoire. Grychtolik deserves praise for his work, and also the modesty and sincerity with which he presents the results.
The performance deserves nothing but praise. Grychtolik has brought together a fine team of soloists. Daniel Johannsen has developed into an excellent Evangelist. He has found the right balance between objectivity and engagement, and his immaculate diction guarantees that each word is clearly intelligible. He also sings his only aria ('Ach! Wie meint es Jesus gut' as Johannes) very nicely. Miriam Feuersinger can be reckoned among the best Bach interpreters of our time, as she proves here once again in the aria of Zion, 'Kommt heraus, und geht vorüber'. Jana Pieters is probably not that well-known; her small contribution as Mary, in the above-mentioned recitative, is excellent. William Shelton has a nice voice; the highlight here is the aria 'Es ist vollbracht', which receives an incisive performance.
The two bass voices are just different enough to tell them apart. As the dialogues in the Gospels are omitted here, Tiemo Wang, in the role of Jesus, has only two arias to sing, among them 'Aus Liebe', which he does beautifully. It is an aria which one has to become used to, given the fame of its soprano version in the St Matthew Passion. Jonathan Sells sings the role of Peter, who has three arias of very different character to sing. The first is a kind of 'rage aria', where he reacts to Jesus' arrest, and here he really lashes out. The other two are in fact a kind of double aria, separated by a short recitative; the second is on the same music as the first, but at a higher pitch. Here he expresses his sadness when he realises that he has betrayed Jesus; the full extent of his betrayal comes off very well. A group of fine ripieno singers takes care of the tutti episodes, among them the impressive opening chorus. With Il Gardellino Grychtolik could be sure that the instrumental parts would be performed in a stylish and engaging manner.
Whatever one may think about the relevance of this reconstruction, it is presented here in a most convincing manner. No Bach lover should ignore it.
Johan van Veen (© 2025)
Relevant links:
Miriam Feuersinger
Daniel Johannsen
Jonathan Sells
William Shelton
Tiemo Wang
Il Gardellino