Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

PROGRAMMe

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johannes-Passion, BWV 245

about

“This man had just come straight from Golgotha,” wrote the music press after watching Mark Padmore’s St John Passion, a digital concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment that was placed online in March last year. This production, in which the British tenor not only performs the role of the Evangelist but is also music director, is now coming to Brussels to close the 2022 Klarafestival.

The St John Passion was (if we don't count the lost Weimarer Passion) Johann Sebastian Bach's first passion oratorio, written at the age of 38 shortly after his appointment as Thomascantor in Leipzig. It was on Good Friday in the year 1724 that this work – which evokes Christ's suffering and death – was first performed during vespers at the St Thomas Church. 

In comparison with St Mathew Passion, St John Passion is more succinct and dramatic. Bach's so-called "small Passion" begins in medias res with Judas's betrayal on the Mount of Olives. The Evangelist, the passion narrator, dispenses with any lengthy dissertations and as a result gives the story extra force. The interventions by the choir are exceptionally vigorous, named 'turba' due to their short and incendiary nature. Through Marc Padmore's remarkable theatrical interpretation, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment nog only retells the passion, but seems to relive it in the most intense way.

Credits

coproduction

Klarafestival, Bozar

in the framework of

The European Galas

image

© Marco Borggreve