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Appréciation d'ensemble / Overall evaluation :
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Reviewer: Nicholas
Anderson Handel’s Brockes Passion opens a window onto the composer’s German Protestant family background. Barthold Heinrich Brockes was an almost exact contemporary of Handel with whom he was acquainted.
His non-liturgical poetic Passion
text enjoyed unusual success from the date of its publication in 1712. Reinhard
Keiser was the first to set it, followed by Handel and Telemann in 1716 and
subsequently other composers, too. Bach was sufficiently attracted by Handel’s
setting to make a copy of it, partly in his own hand, using images from
Brockes’s text for several numbers in his St John Passion.
Why Handel set this text is
something of a mystery, since he had already settled in London where such a
work, in German, would have held little interest. Laurence Cummings has made a
splendid contribution towards rehabilitating a piece which sits awkwardly beside
the Handel we know much better. Sebastian Kohlhepp is an eloquent Evangelist and
Tobias Berendt a resonant Jesus. Johannette Zomer, the Daughter of Zion, has a
formidable technique, but her upper register is a little hard and her vibrato
sometimes too apparent. Rupert Charlesworth, in the role of Peter is, for my
ears, the brightest star in the constellation, along with a commendably alert
chorus. There are many affecting moments in Handel’s score – the duet of Jesus and his Mother, Mary (Ana Maria Labin) is but one of them, and broad hints of music to come in later English oratorios. Only the opening Sinfonia, though, will immediately be recognised from its inclusion in the second concerto of Handel’s Op. 3, printed in 1734.
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