Bach: St. Matthew Passion

This is for the coming Good Friday.

This recording is one of my all time favorites and I have many classical vocal recordings. As a piece of music is outstanding on its own. The soloists in this recording perfect. The choral pieces are gorgeous. All of this under the leadership of the great Otto Klemperer. I highly recommend this recording as a must for your library. You will be quite pleased with it. Enjoy!

This review is from: St Matthew's Passion (Audio CD)Some claim that this 'slow' version of Bach's majestic "St. Matthew's Passion" is an 'acquired taste'.While we now tend to have much brisker tempi for barqoue compositions in modern period performances, this version by Otto Klemperer and his fantastic group of soloists is by no means 'obsolete' if...the tempi in all different sections were being kept to the same slow momentum.In the early 19th century revival of JS Bach's works at Liepzig, the approach towards Bach's sacred works was generally grandiose and slower. There is much merit in this, since in a work such as a Passion, nothing meaningful would be served by submitting to quicker tempo. What's the drama? What's the mood? What's the musical purpose?However, as I mentioned, the success of this recording was being smeared by the much brisker narrative sections - the evangelism.Why should the evangelist sing the recitatives in a quicker tempo than the main story is some thing that I could never understand. In my modern religious experience in Passion Sunday liturgy, such 'hurriedness' adds nothing to the solemnity and profoundness of the religious experience of the congregation.The evangelist here (Peter Pears) did almost just that.

CD's bandwidth limitations to 44.1 kHz makes the sound slightly less rich in harmonics than its LP original counterpart, but the sound engineering still did a good job. This is a must-have for any admirer of Klemperer's orchestral leadership.

Despite a number of negative comments regarding the slower pace of Klemperer's Passion, I have thoroughly enjoyed it on its own terms, indeed exceeding expectations. But I'm in the group that believes that if the performance is excellent, then the listener need not be put off by the length. And the performance is quite powerful.

Gorgeous recording! Every phrase performed with love.

Never mind the overstudied theorists who can reduce anything live to dust! Listen with your spirit, and let your soul drink the vastness - you'll wonder if you've died and went to heaven!

A+

This recording from 1961 is the bench mark on which all others are rightly judged and so far none have come close to it. A team of soloists to die for, a full modern orchestra (no absurd period stuff!!!) a conductor who lives ever bar and record producer who took to much time and trouble in assembling soloists, orchestra and conductor that were simply world beating at the time and 60 years still without question still are.THis is the second copy I have owned. My first copy which I have had for 30 years or more, the 2nd CD for no accountable reason started to stick. My second copy =is the new remastered edition, my first set bought sounded really good however, my 2nd Copy splendidly remastered sounds superby and difficult to believe that the recording is 60 years old. There are gains in the fullness, detail and frequency of the sound and one is now more aware of the spaciousness of the Kingsway Hall where this legendary performance was recorded.Always an overwhelming experience to share in this performance and you feel gravitas and emotion of the subject matter of the passion from the very opening bars which are weighty and magisterial. WIth Klemperer, to borrow the title from Holywood) you realise that J S Bach really is musically telling the greatest story ever told.

In 1967 Otto Klemperer claimed that for him 'Bach's Mass in B minor is the greatest and most unique music ever written'. No doubt he considered the St Matthew Passion it's close companion. Such transcendental music requires for its realisation not a technician but a musician. Here true authenticity is not to seek to replicate what Bach (unfortunately!) heard with his ears but to seek to reproduce what Bach heard in his head during the moments of composition. For some of us Klemperer gets closer than almost any other. This is sublime and profound music making.

I grew up with this recording, I still remember my father playing it on LP on Good Fridays (though an atheist family, we observed custom!) and pointing out the differences between the soprano and alto registers to a four- or five-year-old me. Of course, since then there have been other landmark versions with the smaller orchestras and choirs and faster tempi dictated by the 'period music' cabal (a previous reviewer's comments on them being the politically correct musical police de nos jours certainly made me smile!). To my mind the revelation was not so much Gardiner but the Harnoncourt rendition, where the smaller choir is so agile and the central performers (Bernarda Fink coming as close to Ludwig as it's possible to hope; Matthias Goerne out-Fischer-Dieskaus Fischer-Dieskau; and Christophe Prégardien manages the unthinkable in equalling Pears) are nearly faultless. And yet when I played it to my (by now septuagenarian) father, he complained of the rhythms, he found the choir 'muffled' and finally went 'no-one can outdo Klemperer!'...Well no, they can. But this should never mean that this majestic, expansive, deeply moving recording should be forgotten or denigrated. I read somewhere recently that Otto K. was 'a great conductor despite his unforgivable Bach' - well, aesthetic patricide is probably de rigeur in all of the arts, but surely one could take a deep breath and pause before saying that the ultimate 'Erbarme dich' as sung here by Christa Ludwig, and for which Klemperer and his ponderous time-signature must surely be given some credit too, is 'unforgivable'! I would say the same for the closing and, especially, the opening Chorale, where again I could totally understand young (well, not so young anymore...) Turks thinking 'get on with it, already!' but where the relaxing of the tempo and the swell and rush of the seemingly infinite choir project a majesty, a profound humanity that often gets missed in thin albeit fastidious period-instrument recordings. Buy it - and then buy Harnoncourt or Gardiner or an even newer recording too. It's probably (with the exception of the B-minor mass perhaps?) the greatest choral music ever to be sung on earth, so having multiple versions, and finding good in more than one approach, could only be seen as a good thing. Don't kill your fathers yet...

Bach's St Matthew Passion is a seminal piece of music that defines not just Bach's canon but the whole of classical music. It is beautifully rendered here by orchestra and cast of singers at the top of their game. It takes the listener to the heart of this key moment in the development of Christianity. Sublime and a must have...

Yes, I like it!