Light On Dark Water

Bach: St. Matthew Passion

Now that I understand why this is considered one of the landmarks of music, I have no intention of trying to communicate that knowledge in a paragraph or two. Not that I would be able to do it justice at any length: aside from my lack of technical knowledge, there is in the end a relatively small number of useful words to say about a piece of music. Suffice to say that if you don’t already know this work, you probably should.

I’ll say something about the performance, though. It’s the 1961 recording conducted by Otto Klemperer and featuring legendary singers like Fischer-Dieskau and Schwarzkopf. Even I, who have no expertise and not very much experience of classical singers, can hear that much of the singing here is extremely fine. This recording is regarded as outdated, even obsolete, by some who place a high value on period authenticity: the forces are too large, the tempos too slow (this performance runs over three and a half hours, while many others are well under three), the emotion too sprawling and romantic, etc. But whatever the rights and wrongs of those views, I don’t see how these critics can listen to it without being moved, unless they have taken care to put on their ideological armor first. I don’t care whether it’s authentic or not; it seems extraordinary to me, and my guess is that it will be listened to as long as technology makes it possible.

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