Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Last March, the University of Minnesota School of Music and the Hochschule für Musik Detmold performed a semi-staged interpretation of the great St. Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach. The performance was the culmination of a two-year planning process between the U and the Hochschule in Detmold, Germany. The American and German students rehearsed and studied the piece separately for many months before they finally came together to rehearse about a week before the Minnesota performance at Ted Mann Concert Hall on the U of M West Bank.

Added to the challenge of rehearsing the music together was learning the staging of the production. According to the Passion co-conductor and Director of Choral Activities, Kathy Saltzman Romey, the U's Director of Opera Theatre, David Walsh, "organized the staging within the actual musical structure of Bach's own vision for the piece."

You have the drama occurring or being narrated by the Evangelist and with Jesus responding and his halo of strings around him. Then you have the Chorus, which is sometimes reflecting and sometimes part of the drama. But the arias of the soloists are really about reflection. And so David Walsh put them on elevated platforms on either side of the stage. So essentially their arias became moments to meditate and think about the drama that had just occurred. And then you would come back to the center of the stage or the chorus that was behind them and the drama would resume and then it would stop again either with a chorale or an aria.

Romey's co-conductor was the U of M's Artistic Director of Orchestral Studies, Mark Russell Smith. He says that the dramatic use of space was incredibly important to Bach also when he led performances of the Passion at Thomaskirche in Leipzig for Good Friday service.

We did use more than just the stage as Bach did in St. Thomas Church. The Minnesota Boy Choir was up in the balconies area. There was a procession and a cross was carried in by the members of the chorus as part of the opening scene. So a lot of symbolic use of the space very appropriately as Bach did. He was very aware of the psychological drama and the enhanced meaning for the congregants or the audience and he used that to his advantage.

You can listen to more remarks by Kathy Saltzman Romey and Mark Russell Smith on this particular production, the life-changing experience for them and their students, as well as commentary on Bach and the St. Matthew Passion itself in the pre-broadcast and intermission audio above.

Please join Classical MPR at 7:00 for a full broadcast of this performance. Full text and translation can be found below.