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 is well known to orchestras and audiences alike as both a distinguished conductor and humanist. In September 2002 he became music director of the Orchestre National de France in Paris. Effective with the beginning of the 2008–09 season he assumed the title of honorary music director for life of the Orchestre National de France, ensuring his close and active involvement with that ensemble for many more years to come. From 2000 to 2007 he was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic. From 1991 to 2002 he was Music Director of the New York Philharmonic; following his 11- year tenure he was named Music Director Emeritus, becoming the first New York Philharmonic music director to receive that title, and only the second (after the late Leonard Bernstein, who was named Laureate Conductor) to be given an honorary position.

The New York Philharmonic established the Kurt Masur Fund for the Orchestra, which will endow a conductor debut week at the Philharmonic in perpetuity in his honor. From 1970 until 1996 Mr. Masur served as Gewandhaus Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a position of profound historic importance. Upon his retirement from that post, in 1996, the Leipzig Gewandhaus named him its first-ever conductor laureate. Mr. Masur is a guest conductor with the world’s leading orchestras and holds the lifetime title of honorary guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In July 2007 Kurt Masur celebrated his 80th birthday in a concert at the BBC Proms in London, where he conducted the joint forces of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre National de France.

A professor at the Leipzig Academy of Music since 1975, Mr. Masur has received numerous honors, including the Cross of the Order of Merits of the Federal Republic of Germany; the Gold Medal of Honor for Music from the National Arts Club; the titles of Commander of the Legion of Honor and New York City Cultural Honor from the French Government, and New York City Cultural Ambassador from the City of New York; the Commander Cross of Merit of the Polish Republic; the Cross with Star of the Order of Merits of the Federal Republic of Germany; and the Great Cross of the Legion of Honor with Star and Ribbon. In September 2008 Mr. Masur received the Furtwängler Prize in Bonn, Germany, and is also an honorary citizen of his hometown, Brieg. Kurt Masur has made more than 100 recordings with numerous orchestras, and in 2008 he celebrated 60 years of career as a professional conductor.

“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)