Nicholas Kraemer Pat O’Kelly
Despite visiting Leipzig last year during its annual Bach Festival, my musical encounters centred not on Johann Sebastian but on Claudio Monteverdi, as the event also celebrated the Italian master’s 450th anniversary through his proto-opera Orfeo and magnificent Vespers of the Blessed Virgin.
The St Nicholas Lutheran Church provided the resplendent ecumenical venue for the Vespers. The performance came under the direction of French artist Raphaël Pichon and his Ensemble Pygmalion, which specialises in renaissance and baroque music.
Pichon moved his singers and some of his instrumentalists around the church from time to time to antiphonal advantage. Besides, his chosen tempi guaranteed the Vespers advanced with unflagging momentum and the glories of Monteverdi’s Old and New Testament settings were given revelatory clarity.
But why am I mentioning this now? Well, because Bach’s St John Passion, premièred in St Nicholas Church on Good Friday 1724, will be heard at the National Concert Hall this coming Good Friday at 3pm.
Arias
With RTÉ’s NSO and Philharmonic Choir, directed by English conductor Nicholas Kraemer, the visiting soloists include Nicholas Mulroy as the Evangelist and Patrick Murray as the Christus. Soprano Linda Johnson, countertenor John Lattimore and bass Benjamin Bevan will sing the smaller roles and intervening arias.
Bach spent the period from 1723 to the end of his life in 1750, more or less, in Leipzig where he had been appointed Kantor at St Thomas Church following the death of Johann Kuhnau. Bach’s duties included providing music for the city’s two major churches – St Thomas and St Nicholas – as well as for two of the smaller ones – St Peter and the New Church, formerly a Franciscan friary.
A rule in the larger churches required a motet or sacred cantata be sung every Sunday and this resulted in Bach’s church music output being very considerable indeed. It was also in Leipzig that he composed his great St John and St Matthew Passions as well his Easter and Christmas Oratorios and Mass in B minor.
Before Leipzig, Bach had held several other posts as organist and choirmaster including very prolific periods in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, Weimar and Cöthen. In Weimar he served under Lutheran Duke Wilhelm Ernst (1662-1728), who had a penchant for religious devotions and strove to maintain the Church’s musical traditions. This was to Bach’s advantage giving him a very solid foundation for his own ecclesial compositions.
Before its Bach involvement the RTÉ NSO offers music from the last century at the NCH tomorrow evening. Under German conductor Clemens Schuldt, it moves from Copland’s Appalachian Spring ballet suite to Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto, with Russian soloist Alina Pogostkina, and ends with Shostakovich’s 1st Symphony – a work I have loved since hearing it in Dublin’s old Phoenix Hall. And that was neither today nor yesterday!