Bach St John Passion, OAE/Rattle, RFH – earnest devotions

We live in a secular age, or so we’re told. Yet we seem to need rituals, the age-old practice and province of religion, as much as ever. It is the achievement of Peter Sellars and Sir Simon Rattle to present one without the other in their concert stagings – “ritualisations” – of the Bach Passions they have taken around Europe and to the US since the St Matthew was first shown this way in Berlin in 2011. Last night saw the premiere of the St John in London, much awaited, long-rehearsed and at times striking home with irresistible force.

“It’s not theatre. It’s a prayer,” says Sellars. In truth we experience both, and neither, at his godless touring Oberammergau. The first chorus depicts a tableau of souls in limbo, singers prostrate, pleading for relief and redemption with gestures drawn from medieval iconography. With the strings of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment tucked away in a back corner of the Royal Festival Hall stage, much inner-part counterpoint went for very little, smoothed away by Rattle into a backdrop for the sinuous legato of the oboes’ overlapping lamentations.An interrogation lamp hangs centre-stage and it is to this that Roderick Williams’ Christus (pictured above with Christine

Article source: https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music/bach-st-john-passion-oae-rattle-rfh-review-%E2%80%93-earnest-devotions