Editor's Note: Read the preview and related story- Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra Presents BACH’S ST. MATTHEW PASSION Preview – Conductor Martin Haselböck Interview
Los Angeles philanthropist, Richard Colburn, who is most often associated with the founding of the renowned Colburn School of Music, attended a transfixing performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the Netherlands. In many European countries, it is a yearly tradition. Inspired by the story, Colburn’s descendants and conductor Martin Haselböck hope to bring the custom to Californians.
The prospect attracted a large audience this year, mostly consisting of Europeans. As audience members walked into the Los Angeles Congregational Church during Holy week, many studied the stained-glass windows, which portrays the genealogy of Jesus in vivid colors as well as Old Testament stories and illustrations attesting to God’s guidance of his flock, including prominent figures of American history such as Queen Isabella, Benjamin Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln. The oldest Protestant Church in the Los Angeles, the English Gothic Revival style building dates to 1932 but aspires to a past aesthetic. The public took to their seats and an ominous blue shone on the organ as the overhead lights dimmed and slow strings began the work, as if portending Jesus’ fate.
The Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra and Consort is led by Martin Haselböck. He bowed his greyed head at the groaning of the cellos from the first instant and wore a reverential expression on his face at the entrance of the chorale cantus firmus: “Komm ihr tochter” (Come, ye daughters), in which the soprano line led the other ripieno singers through a harrowing trajectory established by polyphonic harmonies of increasing tension. Bach’s masterpiece sets sections of the Gospel text of Matthew and makes the listener viscerally relive Christ’s trajectory from two days before the Passover feast to his entombment. The work registers as a continuous, prolonged, and solemn meditation on the scriptural narrative interspersed by arias representing the intimate responses of a believer to the events portrayed.
The complex double choir, made up of singers from both the Musica Angelica Baroque ensemble and Haselböck’s Orchester Wiener Akademie in Vienna, provides the portrayal of the disciples or the angry multitude as well as introspective commentaries on the action. In “Hier zittert das gequalte Herz; “Here trembleth the tormented heart”, the chorus embodies the repentant listener who knows that it is his or her sin that brings the innocent to suffering, while “sind blitze” is injustice captured through music. Haselböck’s tempo in the first chorus, while quick and not filled with the weighty despair of the texts, was characterized by the ethereal detachment of a historically informed performance, setting the tone for the evening’s performance. Perhaps some might argue that the inherent tension of Bach’s music threatens to give way to breathless urgency with such an approach, but Haselböck communicated fervor through other means than by slower tempi. Some of his choices sharply illustrated the textual setting, such as the marked fortissimo frenzy of string passages as Jesus intoned: “the sheep of the flock will by themselves be scattered”. When the soprano and alto plangently sang: “so is my Jesus captured now”, Haselböck sharply drew his stick as he directed the chorus in their interjection (“loose him, do not hold, do not bind him!”) To this reviewer, Haselböck entreated a bite in the chorus’ attack that made the moment less of a desperate cry than one might expect. It was as if he meant to highlight an incursion upon the mournful undercurrent of the duet. Following Jesus’ death, when “the earth was filled with quaking, the cliffs split asunder, and the graves themselves opened up”, Haselböck dutifully emphasized the way in which the bass lines lashed out in a series of thunderous scalar runs, evincing scrupulous understanding of Bach’s masterful word painting. As the bass hovered on a rapid tremolo mirroring the trembling of the earth and then ascended chromatically to reflect the text (“and the earth did quake”), the audience felt as unsettled as the scriptural centurions who felt fear at what had occurred. When the chorus as the crowd sang “Truly this was the Son of God” in a brief A flat major key, the stability of the passage established their certain acknowledgement of the presence of the divine.
The narrative is based on a Biblical texts spoken by Jesus, Peter, Judas, Pilate, the High Priest, and a host of other characters in recitative, or in passages that mimic spoken language in a free tempo. The Evangelist, Zachary Wilder, looked like a more youthful and wide-eyed doppelganger of Titian’s 16th-century portrait of Giacomo Dolfin, and he sounded reedlike and humane, as if the declamator of the text was valiantly battling to comprehend an onslaught of sorrow and iniquity. In the section in which Judas arranges to betray his master, Wilder chose to traverse from a pure straight tone on an extreme pianissimo to a virtual cry of anguish; likewise for his melismas in “ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen” (“I will watch beside my Jesus”), he rendered suffering with definite clarity. During the recitative accompanying the Last Supper, Wilder’s crisp diction caused his voiced consonants to explode in the resonant space. A man near this reviewer listened to the passage with his brows furrowed in a paroxysm of anguish and supplication. Pablo Cora, the other tenor of the evening, sang “Geduld” with stoicism and paper-thinness, meekly expressing the desire to forbear the sting of deceiving tongues and rely on God to render justice unto the blameless. Young bass John Taylor Ward was richly and nobly toned, with piercing blue eyes and perfectly white hair. His voice soared even from the balcony. Ward gave dramatic moments their rightful pause, especially in his prolongement of “das des seibige mensch,” as if in restful resignation (“sit here while I go pray”), and not without a caress from strings. During “Meine Seele ist betr¸bt bis an den Tod” (“Now my soul is sore distressed, even to death”, Ward ruminated on a full-throated low note in the nadir of the section. Bach’s musical treatment of Jesus’ injunctions were continually accompanied by a nimbus of both a continuo (keyboard and cello) and a full string section playing grave and sustained notes. Ward and Haselböck rendered the absence of such orchestration -- during Jesus’ final words -- all the more heart-rending by delaying the following silence and the re-entrance of the accompaniment.
Sopranos Teresa Wakim and Theodora Raftis intoned with the nimble and docile timbre of birds -- sometimes wounded birds, as in “Aus Liebe,” Wakim’s aria. As the singer evokes the image of Christ nailed to the Cross, lengthy melismas on the words “liebe” (“love”), “sterben” (“to die”) and “ewig” (forever) kindle an association between the three words: God died out of love for Man in an eternal sacrifice. Wakim approaches the dissonant tritone of the word “death” with a strident flatness to her sound, while the gelid and instrumental pairings of two oboes da caccias and a flute summon the repose of death. Theodora Raftis embodied the elevation of the female perspective as conceptualized by Bach. One of her arias, “Blute nur”, compared Judas’ betrayal to a child’s disavowal if his mother: (“Bleed on, dear heart. Ah, a child that thou raised, That sucked at thy breast, Threatens to murder its guardian”). A last striking image of a serpent, set in a winding melody, called for subito word coloring from the vocalist. Reginald Mobley was a warm-sounding alto while 24-year-old Alois Mühlbacher, prone to looking up from under his blonde eyebrows, had a more brilliant color to his tone and a limpid flexibility. Mobley’s arias were gems, with flutes joining the alto line on falling tears with delicate staccati and the famed “Ebarme Dich”, which lies as the core of the work. Mobley enacted Peter’s plea for forgiveness dispassionately, and the violinist conveyed a concentration of grief, contrition, and horrific tragedy that served as the emblem of compassion and forgiveness. Bass Christoph Filler expanded on the theme; while he thought of the phrasing of “Der Heiland” in square increments, the recitative and aria,“Mache dich, mein Herze,” was a sincere appeal for a pure heart, so that the believer might make of his soul a tomb for the Lord.
The last words of the piece invoke contentment in finding rest for the soul and for an anxious conscience, and yet the final chord weeps with a disquieting leading tone in the oboe. Haselböck seemed to be in a state of spiritual exaltation despite being drenched in sweat. He and the soloists embraced a lady in the front row (whom I assumed to be one of Colburn’s descendents). The audience awarded them all with a standing ovation.
Even though this version of the Matthew Passion struck this reviewer as a self-contained and reverential telling of the passion rather than a burning reenactment of it, all of the elements involved were amply appropriate for the depth of the subject. Given the work's emphasis on the fallibility of human nature, reflecting all of the dimensions of the St. Matthew Passion may be beyond the capabilities of any single ensemble. Nevertheless, Haselböck and his group brought insight to the work and inaugurated a tradition that should be encouraged for years to come.
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TICKETS:
The ensemble’s next performance is on May 6th -- a springtime festival celebrating Baroque music.
For information and tickets visit the Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra website or call 562.276.0865.
