St. John Passion work
retains benign power
'PHE St. John Passion by
Bach was given in Guildford
- Cathedral on Saturday evening to a crowded congrega-
tion.
“second-violin leadetrs also pro-
equal to .:the demands of this
. minenit,
Passion. Yet if there were a
The
Phitharmonic
Choir
slight flaw.it.would-be theproduced
delineation - amd== inderplaying of the passionate
asp_neots
:
G'uxld!fio%d&%flkMMflw--~ . direction throughout while the
~=Orchestrd an
ilharmonic
Choir were joined by six
solotists. Vernon Handley had
risen from a sick bed to conduuct .this concert and the presence of his familiar rehearsal
stool meminded us that he was
not yet fully well.
Unlike
pants
of
the
Matthew Passion, the St. John
seems
to eschew overt drama,
1nsbead igniting a slow-buming fuse and achieving its
cumulative effect in this way.
And
as
the
programme
pointed out, two and a half
centuries of sophistication is
not necessarily the best train-
ing for mankind if its full
force is to be appreciated
today. Yet it is a work which
retains a benign power.
- Rare unisons
Handley was fortunate in his musical forces. The basis
of the score remained the
~ reliable strings of the G.P.O.
with - woodwind nhe
only ~other orchestral section present. John Ludlow and Hugh
Bean steered them through
- the 180 pages and two hours
of
music
with
their twin
acoustics lent a certain. extra
stature and dimension to the
high
regisers. = Ethereal
or
sprightly,
introspective ' or
impassioned. they
moulded
some rare unisons.
The first excitement engendered was after the interval
with real Bach-like phrasing
in If this Man were not a
Malefactor, and O King of
Glory. The complex four-part
Crucify Him, and We Have a
Law, followed by Away with
Him, sounded .in this setting
aptly like a wocal crowdscene.
Philharmonics Choir
The
bumed the fuse progressively
more fiercily through Write
Thou Not, See Him Now to
Ah! Lord When my Last end
The well-judged
Come.
is
well-rounded
choruses
and
chorales yet managed precipice-edge endings, tribute to
the choir and Tod Handley.
Interlaced between choral
sections, the six soloists sang
the harpsichord accomto
paniment of John Forster. All
the soloists were fairly young,
yet none sounded less than
Sound soloists
This was In no sense So
with - the
principal
singer
Julian - Pike.
Hjs
attractive
_ strong temor came across with
feeling and complete clarity
of articulation. Meryl Drower
and
movingly
sang
too
aoc!uraiely, both spirited and
O
in
especially
sensitive
Heart, melt in Weeping with
woodwind accompaniment.’
She is in the best English ora=
torio tradition. Patricia Taylor
rather inconsistently
started
but finished finely in All is
Fulfilled to cello support.
Michael
Bauer
sang
a
sound bass as Christus, per=
haps needing more passion;
‘Ronald
Murdock had style
and
shading as the other
tenor; and Norman Wellsby
gave
-us
‘a
buoyant. second
" bass, emphatic and resounding
where wanted. He had taken
over at very short motice.
“A silence of several seconds
preceded the applause at the
end — eloguent evidence of
the inner quality of this work
and
L EE
its
performance.
—