About this Program

Perhaps no other work in the history of music finds the core of the Good Friday message better than Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244). Composed in Leipzig for Easter Week 1727—during the peak of Bach’s creative years in which he composed cycle upon cycle of original church cantatas—the St. Matthew Passion utilizes the complex perspectives afforded by the interactions of two choirs, two orchestras, solo voices, obbligato instruments, a narrator (the evangelist Matthew), as well as portrayals of Jesus, Peter, and Pontius Pilate. Through kaleidoscopic shifts in viewpoint, Bach conveys a single storyline of Jesus’ betrayal, trial, and crucifixion. Like a master movie director, Bach cuts between scenes of action and those of both intimate and large-scale reflection. Each segment is sustained just long enough to allow the narrative to roll forward to its inexorable conclusion. Always, resting beneath the turbulent surface of the action is the all-important central idea: that unconditional love, freely given, can entail ultimate sacrifice. Very near the work’s end, after Jesus’ death on the cross, the unforgettable bass aria Mache dich, mein Herze rein (My heart, make yourself true), tenderly, sweetly, and with seemingly ceaseless curling motions, implores the soul to absorb the meaning of the Passion story.

Please join us on March 22 & 23 in the acoustically magnificent Hamel Center, with its wonderful sightlines to the stage, for performances of one of Bach’s most enduring masterworks. What a debt we owe to the twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn whose instincts were spot-on when, in 1829—in an era that knew almost nothing of Bach’s music—he went all in with a performance of St. Matthew in Berlin. As Mendelssohn must have known, audiences were indeed starving for the kind of spiritual succor the St. Matthew provided. Now, onward we go, exploring a work that magically reveals new mysteries and beauties each time we approach.

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