Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Bach: St. Matthew Passion

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Palm Sunday comes at the beginning of Holy Week in the traditional Christian calendar. Throughout Western Christendom, whether in Protestant or Catholic lands, during Holy Week the story of Christ's Passion, as recounted in one or another of the four canonical Gospels, was presented in some sung setting to the assembled faithful.

J. S. Bach's setting of the Passion according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew from 1727 is the Lutheran Protestant benchmark Passion derived from the verses of Holy Scripture, as opposed to the related genre of the Passion-oratorio, which tells the story in poetical adaptation by latter-day librettists. I have presented recordings of Bach's St. Matthew Passion at Holy Week of 2002, 2014, and 2017, and my colleague Steve Petke broadcast a recording of it, too, substituting for me in this timeslot on Sunday, March 13, 2022. Then there's the recording of a St. Matthew Passion from 1746 by Bach's contemporary, Georg Philipp Telemann, that went over the air on Sunday, April 11, 2004.

There's a huge discography of this Bach masterwork. Listen for one of the best authentic baroque interpretations of the immortal music to appear on disc in the entire catalog, as originally released in 1998 through French Harmonia Mundi. The Belgian baroque expert Philippe Herreweghe leads the Chorus and Orchestra of his own Collegium Vocale Ghent. Tenor Ian Bostridge is heard as The Evangelist. The voice of Jesus is bass Franz-Josef Selig.