JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)
St. Matthew Passion (1727)
Bach’s The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ According to Saint Matthew is, in the minds of many, the greatest piece of western classical music. It requires double orchestra, double chorus, and a large cast of soloists. Its dozens of component parts are beautifully designed and laid out to tell this central drama of the Christian religion: the trial, suffering, and death of Jesus as a redemptive act for humankind. Bach conceived and constructed his masterpiece on three levels: he tells the story of the passion through recitatives and choruses (the latter representing bystanders of Biblical times); he provides the deeper meaning and reflection on events in the arias, set on new texts; and the symbolic joining into the drama by the congregation is accomplished in the chorales, settings of 16 verses from the Lutheran hymnal (in Bach’s time, they may very well have been sung by the congregation). The texts for the St. Matthew Passion were written by Bach’s Leipzig collaborator, Christian Friedrich Henrici (aka Picander) and drawn from Chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew. Bach draws upon the unlimited reservoir of his genius to bring this amazing masterpiece to life. Among the many special effects to listen for is the Jesus “halo,” a device Bach uses in passages where Jesus sings: such recitatives are always accompanied by the entire string section of the first orchestra (rather than the usual harpsichord). Only during Jesus’s final words, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani” (“My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?”) the halo of music drops away. Bach considered this to be one of his most significant works—something attested to by the 1736 fair copy of the manuscript he made in 1736 in calligraphic style and using two colors of ink (dark brown and red, the latter used for the Biblical text of the Evangelist). The Passion was premiered on Good Friday in 1727 at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Bach was cantor. Though its form shocked audiences of the composer’s day (too much like opera!, they said), it is viewed today as a deeply moving, spiritual experience. It has even permeated the popular consciousness, with section used in several movies, including The Talented Mr. Ripley and Casino.

KURT MASUR, conductor, born in 1927 in Brieg, Silesia
Kurt Masur was music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1991 to 2002, and now holds the title of Music Director Emeritus. During his tenure, the orchestra resumed its “Live from Lincoln Center” broadcasts. At one of them, he recalled that, as a young man, he had been very shy. “I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn’t heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed that I said I have to be a conductor. Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who’s always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and lead them?! I can go in front of an orchestra. I can go in front of an audience. But if you see me walking through an audience at a reception or through a lot of people, I’m still shy.” His studies at the Music College of Leipzig were interrupted by World War II. Needing to earn a living after the war, he played string bass in a jazz combo while continuing his musical training. His first major conducting appointment was with the Dresden Philharmonic in 1955. Starting in 1970, Kurt Masur began his celebrated 26-year tenure as Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a position of profound historic importance, conducting nearly a thousand concerts, and more than 900 on tour. Today he is its laureate music director. He is also honorary music director for life of the Orchestre National de France and principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic, also for life. In 2009, the film Adventures in Listening was released, following the maestro’s master classes around the world and interweaves his teachings and personal life experiences into a comprehensive emotional portrait of one of the most respected music conductors of our time.

“Kurt Masur has bequeathed the Philharmonic a roseate, golden sound, a downy loft to the rhythm, and a spacious sense of breath.” Newsday

Find additional upcoming performances with Kurt Masur

MATTHIAS GOERNE
Baritone, born in 1967 in Weimar, Germany
Both of Matthias Goerne’s parents were involved in the arts: his father was a theater director (and avid record collector); his mother played piano, and his sister was also a gifted pianist. He calls his background “less of a musical climate than a cultural one.” He recalls that even as a young boy of seven or eight, he expressed a desire to sing. “Granted, you don’t normally take such a sentence out of the mouth of a child as seriously as the decision of an 18 year-old, but it was rather unusual,” he says. “Doctor or vet are the more normal professions that strike a child as desirable. I wanted to become a singer.” A student of the legendary baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and the late soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Matthias Goerne returned to the Met as Papageno in Julie Taymor’s production of The Magic Flute. In February 2005 he sang his first Bluebeard at the Berlin Philharmonic, having also sung it in his debut at the New York Philharmonic. This season he appears as Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, a role he sang in Leipzig at Maestro Masur’s invitation and which he has also recorded. Bach is one of the composers who speaks to him—a fact underscored by a Grammy nominations for his recording of Bach arias. As an acclaimed interpreter the lieder repertoire (art songs), Matthias Goerne carries on the long tradition of singers who communicate their artistry with special passion and conviction: “You have to push your own boundaries, otherwise you’re delivering nothing but mediocre goods….I think a song has a chance only if I don’t just convey an impression, but let the audience be a first-hand witness, let it feel like they’re hearing someone who is able to inhabit [the poet’s] world…I want people to feel the highs and lows along with me, to feel things the way I do.” He is sure to bring this level of emotional intensity to the St. Matthew Passion as well.

Gramophone has praised Matthias Goerne for “his extraordinary magnetisms, both in his live performances and on disc.”

A native of Houston, tenor James Taylor attended Texas Christian University as a student of Arden Hopkin. As a Fulbright Scholar, he studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, where he graduated in 1993 with a Meisterklassendiplom. In May 2005 the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale School of Music announced his appointment as associate professor of voice in the program in early music, song, and chamber ensemble. One of the most sought-after Bach Evangelists, Mr. Taylor performed the role for his New York Philharmonic debut with Kurt Masur in 2008, as well as throughout the United States, in South America, Japan, and Israel, as well as in the great concert halls of Europe including Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw, Vienna’s Musikverein, and the Royal Albert Hall in London. Mr. Taylor can be heard on more than 30 recordings. New releases include the Mozart Requiem with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra led by Andreas Delfs on Limestone Records, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with the Nashville Symphony on Naxos, and the rarely-heard Baroque opera Ariadne by Johan Georg Conradi with the Boston Early Music Festival led by Paul O’Dette on ArkivMusik.

“[The St. Matthew Passion] stands or falls by the performances of the vocalist soloists… especially the Evangelist… The American tenor James Taylor brought his sweet, light yet penetrating voice to the role of the Evangelist…” (The New York Times)