![]() ![]() The apparent agenda of this recording is to bring the listener closer to Bach, and all of the tools of historically-informed practices are merely the mechanics by which musical wonders are wrought. There is authenticity of spirit, of course, and there can be little doubt that Bach's underlying agenda in the Johannes-Passion was to bring the congregations for whom the music was created closer to their faith. There is more to authenticity than gut strings, valveless horns, and unequal temperament. The project has no shortage of ideas, but the animation and organic flow of the performance liberate the listener to follow the current of the music without feeling compelled to take notes for a quiz on 'authentic' performance practices. This recording of Bach's Johannes-Passion by the venerated Academy of Ancient Music thus fills an unspoken need. The performance nourished by ideas alone is prone to weakness, and the discriminating listener may ultimately prefer robust ignorance to an informed anemia. As the catalysts of progress, ideas are invaluable, but in the context of recordings they grow thin upon repeated hearing. Just enough details of the circumstances of their genesis are known with relative certainty to empower substantive performances, but the many unanswered questions leave holes in the understanding of these enthralling works that generations of performers and scholars have sought to fill with a dizzying array of ideas. The problem with Bach's Passions is that, since they were rediscovered and returned to circulation by Mendelssohn in the first half of the 19th Century, neither musicians nor musicologists have known quite what to make of them. ![]() In the esteem of those for whom Mozart is superfluous, Beethoven bombastic, Brahms uninspired, and Mahler pompous, Bach remains original and undeniably important a talent slightly too pedagogical, perhaps, but a legitimate and individual one nonetheless. Two of the few things upon which virtually all people with musical inclinations agree are that Johann Sebastian Bach was one of the supreme artistic geniuses of both his own time and all of human history and that his Passions are the monumental foundations upon which the subsequent masterworks of Western choral music were constructed. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Johannes-Passion, BWV 245 (1724 version)- James Gilchrist (Evangelist), Matthew Rose (Christ), Ashley Riches (Pilatus), Elizabeth Watts (soprano soloist), Sarah Connolly (alto soloist), Andrew Kennedy (tenor soloist), Christopher Purves (bass soloist), Philippa Hyde (Ancilla), Richard Latham (Petrus), James Geer (Servus) Choir of the Academy of Ancient Music Academy of Ancient Music Richard Egarr, direction and harpsichord
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