San Francisco Classical Voice

The performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion by the San Francisco Symphony, Chorus and guest artists last Friday was extraordinary in all respects save the ultimate one of the spiritual idea and character. Moreover, there were surprisingly few moving moments. This was all the more curious and almost paradoxical because musically, this was a beautiful rendition, exquisitely detailed in phrasing and nuance, handsomely played. You would think that in its sheer beauty, the music would convey the sacred feeling and meaning of the text. Not so simple, because text and its interpretation are involved.

In his exceptional dual function as both conductor and singer of the commanding role, the Evangelist, Peter Schreier, was literally and figuratively at the center of the performance. Working from a complete memory of the score and with all the music channeled through him, the famed Lieder singer focused the interpretation on the text in its rhythmic aspect and on the specific, immediate or dramatic meaning, but paid little or no attention to the contemplative or prayerful sense. The chorale tempos, for example, were fast because they were dictated by the sense of how those texts would be declaimed in spoken drama as part of a script continuum. While this avoided sentimental and emotive performance, to the good, it allowed for no space, no thought, no breathing room in this three and a half hour experience. For the most part, the chorales are meant to be contemplative asides for a congregation in worship.

The cause for this cruising through the Passion, I believe, lay not necessarily in Schreier's understanding, conception and spiritual sense but partly in a certain performance reality. In acting both as a conductor micro-managing detail and as a singer so fully engaged and dramatically within the performance, Schreier gave up the conductor's critical ability and responsibility for maintaining a perspective on the whole canvas, some listening distance. Being able to stand outside the performance makes it possible for a conductor to shape, pace, and ease off, where necessary, to paint the meaning, the feeling of prayer, of meditation, of the complete spiritual experience Bach envisaged. As a folk saying of the old Southwest goes, you can't ring the church bells and march in the procession.

Schreier's conception then, concentrated on musical flow and dramatic continuity at the expense of the other dimensions that Bach had masterfully woven into the unique structure. Most telling was the loss of the sense of the three separate and interacting time frames Bach had created--the contemporaneous events or the active drama of the Passion and its participants, the Evangelist's recall some 60 years later, and the meditations and spiritual commentary, in current time, of the soloists and the choral congregation. When Schreier set relatively fast tempos for the three choral pillars of the work, the opening call to witness, "Kommt, ihr Töchter," the central acceptance of responsibility, "O Mensch bewein' " and the final farewell and continuing search for consolation, "Wir setzen uns...", he undercut the effect of that framework and the deliberative, magisterial solemnity of that music and the work.

That was a tradeoff for performance qualities that could be welcome in themselves, while compromising the Passion's central idea. The result was lightness and buoyancy in exchange for what can be in perception or actuality, ponderousness. Besides the rhythmic fluidity gained, there was a clarity in the texture, exceptional for Bach played by a modern symphony, with an exquisite definition of the inner polyphonic voices and refinement of nuance.

The remarkable balance was owed in part to the unconventional set-up. Orchestras I and II and their continuo segments were seated in a partial oval or pincers with the strings closest the audience facing inward and upstage towards Schreier at the center. This somehow helped the string tone in the hall. The placement of the string basses at the outside corners, clarified the continuo line.

Schreier conducted while mostly facing forward, occasionally turning to direct the two choruses in the terrace. With minimal gestures to indicate accent, entrance, emphasis, his style was admirably discreet and restrained, While singing the Evangelist's recitatives, Schreier's conducting gestures seemed often no more than a singer's musically intuitive and reflexive hand movements. Schreier's singing itself was exemplary in clarity, feeling, musicality and dramatic expression. His tenor was unalloyed and beaming, sounding like a Lieder performance and giving no hint of his 64 years. (He has been conducting for the last 29.) In conducting a soloist, he stepped off the podium, and faced the singer,

The soloists were a varied group, none impressive to start, but improving in later arias and ensembles. The young (30) German baritone, Jörg Hempel, who had stepped into the role of Jesus at short notice, sang in a refined, gently removed and uplifted manner, his light voice at a disadvantage in the outer reaches of the part. (Schreier allowed or encouraged the strings that accompany Jesus to produce more resonance and sonority than supports its symbolic function as a musical "halo.")

The mezzo soprano Monica Groop (Finnish), unsteady in sustaining the line in her first aria, "Buss' und Reu'", matched the soprano Malin Hartelius (Swedish) finely in duet ("So ist mein Jeus nun gefangen"). She sang the "Erbarme dich" ("Have mercy, Lord"), the most profoundly appealing of the arias , with deep sympathy and warm tone against the violin line, played with an elevated grace by the acting concertmaster, Mark Volkert. Hartelius began coming forward in her second aria against the paired oboes d'amore ("Ich will dir mein Herze schenken" ). Her essentially light soprano carried better, the higher register, purer, and most affecting in "Aus Liebe" against the lovely flute obbligato by Paul Renzi.

The solo principals distinguished themselves: William Bennett, oboe, allied with tenor Steve Davislim (Australian) in "Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen," and Jeremy Constant, Orchestra II's concertmaster, in the brilliant obbligato to the bass aria sung by Andreas Schmidt, "Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder!" Davislim's singing, initially stiff, opened up brightly later. Schmidt whose heavy bass is a little grainy, settled in to a finer focus in the most technically challenging aria, "Komm her, komm, süsses Kreuz." This was sung to the second of the two virtuosic viola da gamba obbligatos, performed creditably on the gamba by symphony cellist Barbara Bogatin.

Vance George's Symphony Chorus sang splendidly, responding keenly to Schreier's very particular gestures, and the combined S.F. Girls Chorus and the Ragazzi (boys chorus, admirably disciplined and needing a conductor up there with them like a third leg) produced the unison chorale melodies finely.

(Robert P. Commanday, the editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

©1999 Robert P. Commanday, all rights reserved