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CHORAL REVIEW
The Powerfully Theatrical Pasión
October 20, 2002
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By Bruce Lamott
Osvaldo Golijov's La Pasión Según San Marcos swept into Stanford's Memorial
Hall Sunday night with all the exuberance of a Carnaval parade. Commissioned
by Helmuth Rilling as part of a project commemorating the 250th anniversary
of the death of J.S. Bach by the International Bach Akademie in Stuttgart, it
joins works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Wolfgang Rihm, and Tan Dun in an
international tetralogy of the Gospel passion settings. Golijov's Passion According to St. Mark is a
powerfully theatrical work saturated with the rhythms, instrumentation, and
vocal techniques of Latin America, performed by an impressive company of 75
singers, instrumentalists, and dancers under the exacting and dynamic
direction of Maria Guinand.
The work is as eclectic as the composer himself. Golijov, an Argentinian of
Russian Jewish heritage living in Massachusetts, brings together the Gospel
narrative, Cuban and Brazilian percussion and vocal techniques,
Afro-Brazilian martial arts (capoeira), and the Hebrew Kaddish in a thrilling
experience that is Gesamtkunstwerk, Latin-American style. However, one has to
wonder what old Bach — himself a stylistic internationalist who fused German,
Italian, and French regional idioms and dance rhythms — might have thought of
the proceedings, as every effort seemed to be made to avoid him at any cost.
A major departure from the Bach passion setting (and any other familiar to
this writer) is an “evangelist” narrative which changes gender, number
(from solo to ensemble), vocal style, and physical location throughout the
work until the role is unrecognizable, and, no thanks to the dim house
lights, illegible, rendering the libretto provided next to useless. There's a pageant of shifting choruses moving about the stage, at times playing the raucous turba (crowd), at others an angelic host, or—as in Bach—the devout believer. The fifty or so voices of the powerful
Schola Cantorum de Caracas (for whom Golijov specifically conceived the
choral parts) demonstrate an impressive variety of choral techniques, from
the strident taunting of the high priests to the ethereal sanctity of the
Eucharist. From the chorus also came some compelling solo singing, notably
from contralto Virginia Largo.
The Orquesta La Pasión, a tight ensemble of virtuoso percussionists, sizzling mariachi-style brass, guitar, accordion, and a string contingent of Stanford students under the direction of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, propelled the work with relentless energy, at times locking onto ostinatos à la Philip Glass, and providing instrumental interludes of intense rhythmic complexity. Unfortunately, the audience was held at the mercy of a sound engineer whose day-job must be setting sound levels at a local megaplex; what could have been captivating instead held the audience captive, an oppressive aural assault that caused the listener to share the suffering on the road to Golgotha. The leading vocalist Luciana Souza, featured by Golijov in other works, is a Brazilian singer/songwriter with a smoky mezzo timbre capable of great nuance. Golijov says that her voice was the inspiration for all of the music he wrote for her: “Her throat carries Brazil's DNA: it is a source of inexhaustible wonder.” As Judas, she narrates in a torch-song accompanied by sensuous cello lines; later pairing her sultry chest voice with the accordion conjured images of Edith Piaf. A second vocalist, soprano Samia Ibrahim Messanne, was used for more transcendent moments, but suffered from intonation problems and approached the celestial lines effortfully. As a 110-minute pageant of Latin Americana, La Pasión is fascinating and exhilarating entertainment filled with stylistic variety, colorful spectacle, and compelling energy. That being said, it so assiduously avoids the conventions of the passion-oratorio (exemplified by the architectonic masterpieces of Bach, whose exacting explication of the text is unequaled) that it renders the text superfluous, a mere vehicle for a fiesta. It is Carnaval mislocated in Holy Week, and St. Mark is lost in the conga line. (Bruce Lamott is choral director of the Philharmonia Chorale and the Carmel Bach Festival. He is also an instructor in music and Western Civilization at San Francisco University, and conducts choral classes in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Extension Program.) ©2002 Bruce Lamott, all rights reserved |
