Texte paru dans: / Appeared in: AAM007 |
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Reviewer: James
A. Altena
Handel’s Brockes Passion is
his one major work in the German passion oratorio tradition. Whereas La
Rezurrezione was written for a Roman Catholic audience in Italy, and Messiah
and the other later oratorios were tailored to Anglican tastes, the Brockes
Passion was aimed squarely at Lutherans. (The explicit theological language
of eucharistic consubstantiation in the first aria of the Daughter of Zion
would scarcely have sat well with either Catholics or Calvinists.)
Provisionally but not definitely dated to 1716, it sets a text by the
prominent German literary and political figure Barthold Heinrich Brockes
(1680–1747). The extremely florid and hyperbolic text—a harmonization of the
four Gospel passion narratives, relying mostly upon John, with the addition
of commentary by the added symbolic characters of the Daughter of Zion and
four Faithful Souls—reflects the rising influence of the Pietist movement in
the German lands, which reacted against what was seen as arid doctrinal
scholasticism and sought instead to encourage intense personal devotion to
Christ by emotional engagement. (A sample from the libretto, at the point
where Pilate condemns Jesus to satisfy the mob: “Your bear-like heart is
hard as stone / To deliver such judgment! / Shall God perish? / I marvel,
you spawn of dragons, / That in your accursed throat / Your tongue does not
blacken and freeze!”)
Despite being a work of
Handel’s maturity, it has until recently been seldom performed. The previous
critical edition, by Bärenreiter, is now 50 years old, and significant new
sources for the score have come to light (unfortunately, Handel’s original
manuscript has not survived), which were drawn upon to prepare this
recording. Good Friday 2019 marked the 300th anniversary of the premiere of
Handel’s Brockes Passion. To mark the occasion, the Academy of Ancient Music
assembled a cracker-jack team of soloists for a concert performance and
associated recording project. This absolutely astonishing set—for which
“definitive” is much too weak a word—is the result.
The cornucopia of riches
offered here is amazing. The set is housed in a sturdy cardboard slipcase,
which is illustrated with an arresting, even disturbing, original charcoal
illustration by artist Emma Safe. Housed in the slipcase are a foldout
digipak that holds the three discs and a 16-page booklet listing tracks and
timings, and a lavish 220-page hardcover book, with a sewn binding and
printed on glossy paper. In the book are numerous additional charcoal
illustrations by Safe (all drawn “live” by her during the 2019 concert
performance, in reactions to the musical moments); lavish color
illustrations with reproductions of manuscripts, portraits of historical
figures, and photos of the concert and recording sessions; an extensive list
of credits for various contributors to this project (almost the proverbial
“cast of thousands”); rosters of participating singers, instrumentalists,
and other AAM personnel; the tracks and timings list from the separate
16-page booklet; a list of financial contributors who underwrote individual
tracks in the set (also listed underneath each track in that section);
essays that provide various contexts by executive producer Alexander Van
Ingen, conductor Richard Egarr, oboist Leo Duarte, co-principal cello Leo
Crouch, and a stellar roster of historians and musicologists; a table of
known performances of musical settings (by Reinhard Keiser, Johann Mattheson,
Telemann, and Handel) of the Brockes Passion text up to 1750; a list with
brief descriptions of manuscript sources for Handel’s music; a bibliography
of basic scholarly sources; bios for the singers and major contributors to
the book, Brockes and Handel, the AAM, and even the British Library; and of
course a detailed German libretto with English translation. (A real oddity
is the inclusion of an essay, “Excess and Hunger: Dining in the 18th
Century,” featuring four recipes.) One more feature bears mention, as I have
never seen its like before: The book provides listings, complete with photos
and cast lists, of both recordings to date of other composers’ settings of
the text, and of previous and currently planned recordings of Handel’s work,
on other CD labels, and even a list of recent major radio and TV broadcasts.
This both represents an incredible act of integrity, and shows that the AAM
is not afraid of losing potential purchasers of this set to competing
recordings. Nor should it be. While the Brockes Passion has until now received relatively few recordings, all of the previous ones have been at least creditable, and most a good deal more. The premiere version on records was a 1967 DG Archiv release, conducted by August Wenzinger and starring Maria Stader, Edda Moser, Ernst Haefliger, and Theo Adam (reviewed by Anthony D. Coggi in 9:2). It is the only non-HIP recording, for those who still look askance at more recent trends in Baroque performance style; it is done in the older grand, monumental style, and mostly well sung, though I find Adam’s Jesus to be a trial. The successive versions came in 1985 from Nicholas McGegan on Hungaroton (David Johnson, 10:4), in 2009 from Peter Neumann on Carus (Ron Salemi, 34:2, who provides a superb comparative analysis of Neumann and McGegan), and in 2019 from Laurence Cummings on Accent (not reviewed). All three of these HIP versions are strong. I slightly prefer Neumann and Cummings to McGegan; between the first two, I prefer Neumann’s more pointed conducting but Cummings’s soloists. But this new version sets the bar even higher and is now the one of choice. Every vocalist is very good to excellent; top honors go to Elizabeth Watts as the finest Daughter of Zion on disc, a role to which Handel allots about 40 per cent of the score. Robert Murray and Cody Quattlebaum are scarcely less fine as the Evangelist and Jesus. In the chief supporting roles, Ruby Hughes, Nicky Spence, and Gwilym Bowen are top-notch as well, while Tim Mead and Morgan Pearse each deservedly gets to shine in one aria. Richard Egarr and the AAM forces are of course sovereign masters of Handelian style, and the recorded sound is exemplary. Yet another bonus is that this set includes a third disc, with recordings of numbers in Handel’s score that exist in alternative versions and of portions for which Charles Jennens (Handel’s librettist for several works, most notably of course Messiah) drafted English translations before abandoning the project.
The book
notes that three competing recordings, also commemorating the tercentenary
of the Brockes Passion, are announced for imminent release, led respectively
by Lars Ulrik Mortensen (also reviewed in this issue), Stefan Schultz, and
Jonathan Cohen. However good they may be, I do not see how they will begin
to compete with this version as an overall package. While the Fanfare
publishing year is only halfway done, and even more urgent surprises may
come down the pike, at this point this release has “Want List entry” stamped
all over it. This recording not only receives my highest possible
recommendation; I confidently predict that it will be a landmark that
finally places the Brockes Passion in the standard repertory, alongside
Messiah and the two Bach Passions. | ||||
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