Rias chamber choir : It's bubbling under the blessed surface

this Can be really the same work? Ten days ago, only turned Simon Rattle with the Director Peter Sellars, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Berlin radio choir, Bach's St John Passion in a music-theatre evening of disturbing questions. Now, the Rias chamber choir sings the work under its chief conductor, Justin Doyle, accompanied by the Akademie für Alte Musik. That a whole series of originally occupied soloist due to illness was by a singer of the Choir was replaced, does not weaken the approach to Interpretation in the concert hall. Because where Rattle continues to deeply individual pity, even Despair of the passion story, stresses Doyle, the merry, of hostility, not to the harrowing message: "Through your prison, son of God, must our freedom come." Bach in his score even write: "we have the freedom to come." There is certainty and a reason for joy.

Simon Rattle and the Philharmoniker conducted In the greatest lowliness

This is the starting point for Doyle's reading, which bounces first on the pain-filled dissonance of the introductory chorus. And amazing: The Academy of Ancient music under his hands, softer than the orchestra, paints a umflortes, quasi-translated sound. However, not everything fits effortlessly into this river. Like under the magnifying glass, not to protrude the individual phrases of a sudden, the sentence ends with a robust sound different. And as the soldiers loose to the Rock of Jesus, it sounds like a genuine Handel. Under the hostile surface, it sizzles. It is a question of how much stylistic unity of the St. John Passion actually needs. And believable into Cheer. The Bass soloists from the choir, make your games freed from the urge for individualization. Peter, Christ and Pilate, not more rings here, they have accepted their roles in the great plan of salvation. Werner Güra as the Evangelist draws its high proven track. The young countertenor Benno Schlachtner is to certify the change between mourning the night and the victory. It is finished! And the choir closes with a velvet glove, the empty hell.