The 7th Estonian-Tel Aviv Music Festival presents J.S.Bach's St. John Passion - Andres Mustonen (Estonia) conducts the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, the Collegium Musicale Chamber Choir (Estonia) and soloists at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Maestro Andres Mustonen (photo: Yoel Levy)

One of the twenty events of the 7th Mustonenfest Tallinn-Tel Aviv, taking place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other Israeli locations, was J.S.Bach’s St. John Passion, featuring the Israel Camerata Jerusalem (director: Avner Biron), the Collegium Musicale Chamber Choir, Estonia, (director: Endrik Üksvärav) and Estonian vocal soloists. Conducting the performance was Andres Mustonen (Estonia), founder and conductor of the Estonian-Israeli music festival. This writer attended the performance in the Recanati Hall of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on February 15th, 2020. 

 

The St John Passion was composed during Bach‘s first year as director of church music in Leipzig, where he served as cantor at the St. Thomas School, composer for the city’s two principal Lutheran churches - the Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche - also supervising and training the musicians at two other Leipzig churches. The St. John Passion was first performed there on Good Friday, April 7^th 1724. Altogether, it was heard four times during the composer’s lifetime, each time with substantial alterations, according to availability of instruments or players, because of changes in theological fashion and possibly due to Bach’s own desire for perfection. 

 

The St John Passion is perhaps the most intensely human of Bach’s great sacred works, its writing perfectly balancing the theatrical and devotional. In his setting of the Passion of Christ as told in the Gospel of John, the biblical passage running throughout tells of how Jesus was captured, led before Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, judged, crucified and put to death. It is not known who compiled and adapted the libretto. For the solo arias, Bach enlists poetry from popular German Passion anthologies. A dramatic work – albeit not as comforting and consoling as the St. Matthew Passion - it is as close to writing an opera as Bach was ever to come.  At its core is the narrative, the text of the Gospel itself, sung in recitative by a tenor representing the Evangelist (Anto Õnnis, Estonia), with Christ’s words sung by a bass (Aare Saal, Estonia); in addition, the smaller roles of  other characters (Peter, Pilate, etc.) were undertaken by choir members, while the utterances and exclamations of the crowd are voiced, succinctly (but sometimes with almost hysterical intensity) by the chorus. 

 

Taking on the mammoth tenor role, Anto Õnnis, no new face to Israeli audiences, sang with articulacy and freshness, marking sensitive and dramatic gestures and engaging in shaping, word-painting and strategic timing. Eying the audience in his storytelling may have resulted in more highlights. A cantabile, touching, deeply musical moment was given fine expression by Õnnis in the following aria, with its two-violin obbligato:
“Ponder well how his back bloodstained all over is like the sky;
Where after the deluge from our flood of sins has abated,
There appears the most beautiful rainbow as a sign of God’s mercy!”

Bass-baritone Aare Saal (Estonia) gave a performance rich in colour and resonance, at times tending more to the operatic than the sacred. At home in the oratorio medium, alto Iris Oja was a little understated in her first aria, then rising to the occasion in “Es ist vollbracht” (It is ended), as she and 'cellist Marina Katz gave moving expression to this key moment, evoked by the timbrally low and sonorous solo viola da gamba (in Bach’s time, the viola da gamba was associated with death) merging descending musical lines in the solo vocal and instrumental parts to describe grief and despair after Jesus has expired. In the course of the aria, the two artists lead the aria from its mournful lament to becoming one of sombre, poignant faith and resignation. Katz’ playing was convincing and affecting.  A singer of outstanding stage presence, soprano Maria Valdmaa delighted the audience with her sparkling, vivacious timbre and vocal agility, as she shaped each gesture of the text and its emotion into the arias, enhanced by some splendid flute and oboe obbligato playing. 

 

The Collegium Musicale Chamber Choir offered some crisp, effective, incisive, dramatic and well-phrased performance, addressing importance to the two large “bookend” choruses  - the strangely haunted and anxious opening chorus and the extended, sublime valedictory lullaby, “Ruht wohl” (Rest well), surely one of the most poignant choruses that Bach has penned, the Passion closing with a chorale expounding triumphant affirmation of faith. The choir members’ German pronunciation, lacking in clarity of consonants, needs work. In the orchestra’s significant role, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem’s instrumentalists gave fine support to the works “comments”, to obbligato playing and to endorsing choral crowd scenes, in which the orchestra adds still more voices to the already intricate counterpoint. In its concise, clearly-defined structure, Bach's St. John Passion is gloomy, stressful, highly emotional and powerfully meditative. Its depth comes from its subtlety. Bach has created a moving work with musical, spiritual,and psychological unity of form. As to Maestro Mustonen’s reading of the work, the communal element, brimming with urgency, musical variety and intensity, emerged stronger than its meditative, reflective and profound spirituality.