The Times Review – Wednesday 30 November 2011
Richard Morrison
4 star
For a work not designed to be staged at all, Bach’s St Matthew Passion has endured some wacky theatrical maulings in recent years. But this staging, running for three nights in a disused concrete laboratory on the Marylebone Road, adds a new dimension. Several hundred youngsters, who have been immersed in the St Matthew for weeks and invited to these performances, will now have their receptivity to classical music monitored by a professor of music psychology. The optimistic thesis is that Bach will change their lives.
The project has been devised by Suzi Digby and her new Vocal Futures foundation. As well as conducting the piece she also raised what must have been an astronomical sum of money to make it happen, for this is no cut-price kid’s show. The orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with its leader Margaret Faultless sublime in Erbarme dich. The superb chorus comprises 32 young professionals. The role of the Evangelist is divided, with the outstanding Joshua Ellicott doing an anguished double-act with the promising Samuel Boden.
Willard White, not less, sings Christ: stiffly but with immense nobility. And the aria soloists – Helen-Jane Howells, Robin Blaze, Catherine Hopper, Andrew Tortise and Stephen Loges – are riveting. The ensemble gets a little unhinged at odd moments; otherwise I have rarely heard the St Matthew sung and played so convincingly.
Patrick Kinmonth’s staging turns this austere venue into a rough wooden barricade – orchestra, chorus and audience raised on two sides; the action in between. A dozen silent actors, and a lot of wooden tables, evoke (rather than literally depict) the Passion story.
Modern dress – High Priests looking like mafia thugs in their black leather – matches a striking new translation by Kinmonth and Jessica d’Este.
There are no tremendous insights; but equally, nothing jars – and the use of the space, as well as the mingling of soloists and miming actors, is as effective as Digby’s varied treatment of the chorales. None is treated more strikingly than the great Passion chorale itself. We hear a recording of the participating youngsters singing it, while a video mosaic of their faces gradually forms on the floor. What better way to symbolise how the resonances of the Passion, and Bach’s music, have echoed through continents, centuries and generations?
Richard Morrison
4 star
For a work not designed to be staged at all, Bach’s St Matthew Passion has endured some wacky theatrical maulings in recent years. But this staging, running for three nights in a disused concrete laboratory on the Marylebone Road, adds a new dimension. Several hundred youngsters, who have been immersed in the St Matthew for weeks and invited to these performances, will now have their receptivity to classical music monitored by a professor of music psychology. The optimistic thesis is that Bach will change their lives.
The project has been devised by Suzi Digby and her new Vocal Futures foundation. As well as conducting the piece she also raised what must have been an astronomical sum of money to make it happen, for this is no cut-price kid’s show. The orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with its leader Margaret Faultless sublime in Erbarme dich. The superb chorus comprises 32 young professionals. The role of the Evangelist is divided, with the outstanding Joshua Ellicott doing an anguished double-act with the promising Samuel Boden.
Willard White, not less, sings Christ: stiffly but with immense nobility. And the aria soloists – Helen-Jane Howells, Robin Blaze, Catherine Hopper, Andrew Tortise and Stephen Loges – are riveting. The ensemble gets a little unhinged at odd moments; otherwise I have rarely heard the St Matthew sung and played so convincingly.
Patrick Kinmonth’s staging turns this austere venue into a rough wooden barricade – orchestra, chorus and audience raised on two sides; the action in between. A dozen silent actors, and a lot of wooden tables, evoke (rather than literally depict) the Passion story.
Modern dress – High Priests looking like mafia thugs in their black leather – matches a striking new translation by Kinmonth and Jessica d’Este.
There are no tremendous insights; but equally, nothing jars – and the use of the space, as well as the mingling of soloists and miming actors, is as effective as Digby’s varied treatment of the chorales. None is treated more strikingly than the great Passion chorale itself. We hear a recording of the participating youngsters singing it, while a video mosaic of their faces gradually forms on the floor. What better way to symbolise how the resonances of the Passion, and Bach’s music, have echoed through continents, centuries and generations?
