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                                           BACH ST JOHN PASSION

                                           Ex Cathedra at Symphony Hall ****

Ex Cathedra’s Good Friday presentations of the Bach Passions, whether at Symphony Hall or Birmingham Town Hall, have become the stuff of legend, but I fear, as Jeffrey Skidmore prepares to step down after over half a century on the podium of the chamber choir he founded, this performance of the St John Passion proved more of an irritation than an uplifting spiritual experience.

Where Bach’s St Matthew Passion is discursive, contemplative, framed by two huge, immersive choruses, the St John is taut, dramatically unfolding, and taking no prisoners in its graphic account of the Crucifixion narrative. Here, though, in a misguided attempt at an authentic reproduction of its original performance on Good Friday 1724 (there will never be true authenticity without the unforgivingly hard pews of Leipzig’s St Nicholas Church), the actual music was subsumed in a wrapping of organ improvisations (the excellent Rupert Jeffcoat), what would have been a fascinating sermon from the writings of Frank Skinner had the sound been tweaked up a tad, and congregational hymns, in which at least one attendee had not signed up to participate.

Amongst all this Skidmore’s excellent choristers and adept instrumentalists delivered their customary fluent, airy, well-delineated account of whatever music they are tackling, and here, shorn of all the trappings, this gripping score would have carried us along in the inexorable journey which begins with the shadowy, restless throngs gathering in the Garden of Gethsemane, and ends with the apparent finality of entombment. But Bach’s message was lost, the muscularity of his writing drowning in the soft-centred bathos of “God so loved the world” from Stainer’s Crucifixion which followed the simple, sealing chorale.

All this aside, we could celebrate one huge triumph emerging from this afternoon. The announced Evangelist was indisposed, so Daniel Marles stepped into the breach, taking over this vital role with engagement, conviction, and indeed a throat-grabbing sense of outrage at the unfolding of these monstrous events before the final, exhausted laying to rest.

Christopher Morley

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