COMPOSERS: Schutz
LABELS: Da Capo
WORKS: Die Sieben Worte, SWV 478; Johannes-Passion. SWV 481
PERFORMER: Else Torp (soprano), Linnéa Lomholt (alto), Adam Riis, Johan Linderoth (tenor), Jakob Bloch Jespersen (bass); Ars Nova Copenhagen and Instrumental Ensemble/Paul Hillier
CATALOGUE NO: 8.226093
This deeply moving performance lives up to the promise of the two previous discs in the series covering Schütz’s Historia, narratives on the Birth, Passion and Resurrection of Christ. Schütz’s music is profoundly simple.
The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross open and close with a reflective choral ensemble (one-to-a-crystal-pure-part) and an instrumental sinfonia, here given to violas da gamba and sackbutts, a warm colour compared with the more conventional strings of most other recordings.
The Evangelist’s role is shared between voices, as if several different witnesses were describing Christ’s utterances from the cross, while His words have a halo of two gambas and continuo, anticipating Bach in his Passions by over 60 years.
Paul Hillier paces the narrative subtly, from down-to-earth description to slow contemplation, with the melodic outline, harmony and word repetitions interpreting and illuminating the German text. Christ’s fragmented ‘It is finished’, gasping in His final agony, is awe-inspiring. The singers, admirably matched, are helped by the church acoustic, which warms the tone without obscuring detail.
The St John Passion’s unaccompanied monody from the Evangelist, relieved only by a choral crowd, is more accessible to a German congregation on Good Friday than to English listeners out of that context. Yet the simplicity of the bare, unadorned line is hauntingly beautiful and enhanced by excellent recording. George Pratt