Bach and his passion - Residentie Orkest

You can hardly imagine but it has been three years since the Residentie Orkest last performed Bach's unsurpassed masterpiece the St. Matthew Passion. The annual tradition since 1907 was interrupted by a worldwide pandemic. But we are back! With the Netherlands Chamber Choir, a host of soloists and renowned Dutch conductor Peter Dijkstra, the tradition is being reinstated.

And to think that after Bach's death, the St. Matthew Passion was left under the dust. It was the 20-year-old Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy who managed to get the 'Grosse Passion' back on the desks. On March 11, 1829, some one hundred years after its premiere in Leipzig, he conducted the first performance at the Berlin Singakademie from behind the grand piano (!). However, with an enormous choir - 158 singers - and numerous cuts, especially chorales and arias had to be eliminated.

Nevertheless, it was a great success and Bach's music began a well-deserved revival. The Netherlands followed in 1870 in Rotterdam and not much later it was Amsterdam's turn. It was Willem Mengelberg who from 1899 established the passion tradition of annual performances on Palm Sunday in the Concertgebouw. Mengelberg's approach was very different from what we are used to nowadays: a large choir and orchestra (450 persons!) and no baroque instruments. In the process, he also shortened the work considerably. And still a performance took an eternity because of the slow tempi.

"The St. Matthew Passion is about man in all his facets, and Bach knows how to express human emotions such as unconditional love, betrayal, sorrow and self-sacrifice in an unparalleled way."

- Peter Dijkstra

Masterpiece
Where to begin if you want to say something meaningful about this century-old masterpiece. Jan Willem de Vriend once said, "This piece humbles me. I feel like a little mouse in the largest cathedral in the world, trying its best not to get lost." According to Peter Dijkstra, who is conducting the Matthäus in Leiden and The Hague this year, "The Passion of Jesus, as Bach has set it to music, has an enormous dramatic eloquence, and the human aspect of the story fascinates me: it is about man in all his facets, and Bach knows how to express human emotions such as unconditional love, betrayal, sorrow and self-sacrifice in an unparalleled way. These emotions are of all times, which makes the St. Matthew Passion a timeless masterpiece. For the past two years, coronagraphs prevented me from performing the St. Matthew Passion, and that made me notice once again how important this work is to me. As a religious person, the Passion means a lot to me, and the masterful way in which Bach sets this work in tone gives it extra color. I regard the performance of a passion as a recurring ritual and it not only has its fixed place in the church year, but also in my life." Dijkstra is therefore looking forward to the cooperation with the Residentie Orkest. "I have very good memories of the previous project: it was an Italian evening with works by Verdi and Puccini, among others, several years ago now. I am looking forward to seeing the musicians of that time again, as well as the new additions to the orchestra. The orchestra has had an exciting journey in recent years, and it will be exciting to see how we come together again. I am also very curious about the Great Hall at Amare, the orchestra's new home. It looks beautiful, and I hope it sounds that way too!"

Tradition
The St. Matthew Passion stands in a long tradition, Bach did not come up with it plumply. As early as the tenth century, the passion story - the story of Christ's suffering and death - was sung on Good Friday. Here the roles of Christ, narrator (evangelist) and people were divided among different (groups of) singers. Around 1500, polyphonic passions emerged, and as we enter the Baroque era, we see the emergence of the oratorio passion: the literal text from the Gospel of Matthew is supplemented with new, free texts that serve as meditations and chorales. And so it is with Bach, where the free texts are written by Picander, the pseudonym of the young Christian Friedrich Henrici (1700-1764), Opperpostkommisar at Leipzig.

Structure
The structure of the Matthäus is quite clear. After the grand opening chorus - "Kommt, ihr Töchter, half mir klagen" - the evangelist tells (or rather recites) Jesus' Passion story with minimal musical accompaniment. These recitatives are punctuated by arias and chorales sung by soloists and choir. Jesus, of course, also appears, sung by a low male voice and accompanied by lovely strings, as if by a halo. Except for the phrase "Eli, eli, lama asabthani" ("My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me") where the strings are absent: Bach thus illustrates the complete desolation of Christ. The Matthäus ends at death and entombment with the final chorale 'Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder', sung by both choirs. Indeed, two choirs, because the Matthäus is double-choired which produces a fantastic stereo effect but especially a tremendous vividness in the sung texts.

Most Beautiful Choice
Unfortunately, we know nothing of the very first performance on Good Friday, April 11, 1727. No records survive what listeners thought of the piece. They probably reacted coolly to the new-sounding portions of the Passion. In any case, since Bach's music was part of the church service on Good Friday, people will not have run away. Incidentally, that did happen when the St. Matthew Passion was first performed in Amsterdam in 1874. Audience members walked out of the hall during the final chorus. According to tradition, conductor Johannes Verhulst turned around and cried out with tears in his eyes: "People, what are you doing? You are running away from the most beautiful song ever written! Surely those days are over.
Jan Jaap Zwitser

Last tickets for our Matthäus Passion in Leiden and The Hague?

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Residentie Orkest and the St Matthew Passion

- First performance in 1907 in Rotterdam.
- In 1908 it was The Hague's turn, incidentally two weeks after Easter!
- A ticket cost f 0.75 but you were allowed to bring 'a Dame'.
- Soprano is the renowned Aaltje Noordewier who also frequently performed in Amsterdam.
- In 1910 the The Hague audience is asked "not to leave before the Final Chorus has ended."
- There was only a ten-minute break between movements.
- After World War II, Residentie Orkest can also be found in the Matthäus temple of the Netherlands: the Grote Kerk in Naarden.
- With famous soloists such as Jo Vincent, Elly Ameling, Willem Ravelli, Louis van Tulder and Aafje Heynis.
- In 1947 the Residentie Orkest played the Matthäus 15 times.
- After many performances in Naarden, the orchestra can also be found frequently in Leiden's Pieterskerk.
- In 2006 there is even a unique version: the Dutch retranslation by Jan Rot. The Dr. Anton Philipszaal is almost too small and the audience rewards choir, soloists and orchestra with a standing ovation that lasts more than twenty minutes. Could Bach have ever imagined that?