H+H revisits St Matthew Passion

In their bicentennial year, Handel and Haydn are pulling out all the stops, presenting a sort of "greatest hits" of period pieces. I have reviewed Elijah in a previous post and this past weekend was a full performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, a lengthy work that at is often presented as excerpts. Here the full performance lasted 3 hours with a brief intermission. A "passion" is a recital of Jesus' arrest, death and burial, and can be taken from one of the four Evangelists' texts. Director Harry Christophers describes the Bach Passion as probably the greatest work of classical music ever written, and must indeed have been innovative for its day. While I hate to say a critical word given such hyperbole, I found the performance a bit flat for such a lengthy period of sitting. The lion's share of the work belongs to tenor Joshua Ellicott as the Evangelist. He gives the narrative and intoduces the other characters. Fortunately he had a splendid voice and expressive face. Baritone Roderick Williams played Jesus, a surprisingly small part, and while his voice was beautiful, he lacked emotion. The soprano Joelle Harvey soared in her parts, while the mezzo Anna Stephany came across as a bit dull. Both tenor Matthew Long and baritone Sumner Thompson were adequate but not inspiring. An interesting feature of the piece is Bach's use of solo instruments to back up a number of the solo vocal presentations. This allowed H+H's superb instrumentalists to display their virtuosity. The chorus performed as two antiphonal choirs, and a third choir made up of students from H+H's Vocal Arts Program came in at times to add volume. The voices of the H+H chorus are magnificent, but the work did not really allow them to display their full range. The ending of the Passion was more of a whimper than a shout. An important work, a huge effort, but on the whole not as satisfying as was Elijah.