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St John Passion
24 August 2000
Royal Albert Hall, London(Prom 51)
Ivor Bolton, conductor
Evangelist: Paul Agnew, tenor
Christ: Sanford Sylvan, bass
Toby Spence, tenor
Michael Chance
Gerald Finley, bass
Ruth Ziesak
St James's Baroque Players
Choir of Clare College Cambridge
What the critics say
Rick Jones for The Evening Standard, 24 August 2000
Bit of Christmas in August
The Proms celebrated anniversaries of the death of Bach and birth of Christ last night, 250 years for one, 2,000 for the other. Ideally we should have heard the Christmas Oratorio at some point in the season but who can picture Christmas in August in the hot, un-air-conditioned Hall (except Australians of course)?
In fact we have celebrated Christ's birth by his death three times. Norrington's B Minor Mass was confident, Koopman's St Mark Passion was defiant, but Ivor Bolton's St John, performed last night by the St James's Baroque Players and choir of Clare College Cambridge, like Peter's last denial, was the most passionately insistent of all.
The evening took wing with the choir's first entry. Remind me to attend Evensong next term. The aitch of Herr! was crisp percussion each time it came. Their vocal tone was resonant, robust and adult. Clare is one of two mixed chapel choirs at Cambridge. Some of the altos are male, so it is not quite an equal gender balance, but their shared maturity, their random stage positions regardless of voice-part and their never-flagging commitment to the story made them convincing wondering bystanders. Tenor Paul Agnew was an eloquent Evangelist, his high tone ringing around the dome.
Bass Sanford Sylvan was a plausibly human Christ. His low notes sounded of sin. Toby Spence's smooth, easy tenor made gruesome imagery palatable. Michael Chance slightly overindulged the alto arias. Gerald Finley's richly expressive bass sparred dramatically with the whispered responses (Wohin?) of a cowering choir.
Ruth Ziesak hocketed in the last aria. I am not sure how authentic this was, but it suited the moment and sounded just as if she were sobbing, like Peter, bitterly. Three stars - as the cock crows and the milkman visits.
Nick Kimberley, The Independent, 29 August 2000
http://arts.independent.co.uk/music/reviews/article258033.ece
…Wednesday's packed house suggested that the Proms audience is not suffering from surfeit of Bach; and anyone jaded might feel renewed by this enlivening performance of the St John Passion. The period instruments of the St James's Baroque Players imbued the drama with an intimacy shorn of rhetorical exaggeration - apt, when in Bach's account the Passion is an affair of the heart, not a religious ritual.
An Everyman rather than a zealot, Paul Agnew sang the Evangelist with the buttonholing intensity of a man who has seen terrible things and must tell us about them. While Sanford Sylvan's Christ had all the necessary dignity, it was Gerald Finley's Pilate who emerged as the more complex character. Meanwhile, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge relished every part assigned to it, one moment howling for blood, the next grieving or, in "Ruht wohl" (Rest in peace), offering comfort to their dead saviour.
Ivor Bolton allowed the music to breathe, nowhere more so than in the obbligatos. The viola da gamba (played by Erin Headley) that wove in and out of Michael Chance's counter-tenor aria "Es ist vollbracht!" was as beautiful as anything I heard this week.