Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert 21 March

Featuring:
- Bach St. John Passion

Timothy Robinson - Evangelist
Stephan Loges - Christ
Matthew Brook - Pilate/baritone
Rachelle Durkin - Soprano
Renee Martin - Mezzo-soprano
James Egglestone - Tenor
Thomanerchor Leipzig: Georg Christoph Biller - Thomaskantor
Oleg Caetani - Conductor

There's nothing more exciting than to come to a concert programming a masterpiece that you have not had a chance to listen before, and the concert ended up convincing you why the masterpiece deserves its reputation. I have never listened to Bach's long choral works - the longest cantata that I've listened to is less than 10 minutes long -. I don't really know what to expect from a Passion, apart from the knowledge that I'll be expecting plenty of Christian stories being told with music.

After the MSO last Saturday's concert, I am glad that I subscribed to this concert in the first place. It was a full house at Elisabeth Murdoch Hall in the new Melbourne Recital Centre. I arrived 1 minute before the performance started and since I got a seat in the middle of a row, I have to walk past 10 or so people in a very awkward manner and have to inconvenience all of them. The weather was quite warm that day, and I was sweating quite heavily when I was finally seated from a combination of fast-walking plus a little bit of panic to reach the concert hall on time. I swear this is my last time arriving at concert hall at most 5 minutes before the concert started.

While still sweating and speed-reading the programme notes, the choirs and soloists came out and the music started. The opening chorus immediately grabbed my attention for its high dramatic moments. Then I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the story of being told in the passion is the last episode of Christ's life till his crucifixion. Being sent to a Christian school during my primary school, I was required to learn and memorise some of Christ's stories - although I'm not a Christian. Anyway, with some bittersweet memories of my youth, I can follow all the stories being told by a very engaging Evangelist. I cannot really comment on any details of the work as I'm not very familiar with it and therefore am not sure on how things should be done for the performance of a passion. Overall, I've found the soloists were very good, but the emotional impact that they could bring to the work could have been better. I love the choral parts the best, and I was in my high emotion in the last chorus when the text 'ich will dich preisen ewiglich (I would praise you for all eternity)!' was being sung. That last chorus itself affected me so much that my mind was in the 'wandering' mode thinking of Bach's musical genius.

My other comments on the performance: the orchestra was really trimmed up. Probably around 10 violins, 5 violas, 4 cellos, 2 basses, a pair of flutes, one each of oboe, cor anglais, bassoon, a small organ, lute and theorbo. Caetani gave a wonderful accompaniment to the choir and soloists, but the man of the night was David Berlin - the principal cello who played wonderful solos throughout the work. Calvin Bowman, the organist, was probably the busiest man of the night, providing bass lines throughout the performance. The hall's acoustic really helped the deep bass line were as clear as crystal compared to the sound that I normally listened to in Hamer Hall.

Summing up, this concert has officially converted me wanting to listen to Bach's sacred choral masterpieces. Popular opinion has regarded both St. Matthew's Passion and Mass in B minor to be superior to St. John's Passion. All that's left for me to do is to discover all of these wonderful music.

Next concert: 'The Emperor' - Beethoven's 5th piano concerto and his symphony that never failed to put me in a lighter mood - the 8th! - in one month's time.