Review – J.S. Bach Easter Oratorio – John Eliot Gardiner

The new Solo Dei Gloria disc containing J.S. Bach’s Easter Oratorio is the latest in John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir’s efforts to record pieces which were, for one reason or another, left off the roster of the Cantata Pilgrimage project but, nonetheless, have some kind of claim to be part of any comprehensive collection of Bach’s Sacred Cantatas. It also includes a new version of the BWV 106 , the Actus Tragicus, a product of the young Bach’s period in Muhlhausen.

BWV 106 seems to have been written as funeral music possibly for Bach’s uncle but whatever the specific occasion for its origin, it is a sublime composition that encapsulates a Lutheran reading of the entire Biblical narrative. The music and words move from condemnation under the Law, through Christ’s announcement from the cross that ‘today you shall be with me in Paradise’, to the church of justified sinners entering glory at the end of time after the sleep of death. Unlike Bach’s Passions and many cantatas of the Liepzig years, the music of Actus Tragicus is contemplative rather than dramatic, a recollection of sacred history rather than a participation in it and, as such, appropriate to a funeral setting.

By contrast, the Easter Oratorio is perhaps the most dramatic of Bach’s sacred works. Lacking a narrator, this reworking of an earlier but now lost secular cantata portrays, in sung dialogue, the interaction among Peter, John, Magdelene, the Virgin, and others on Easter morning after finding the empty tomb. Performed for the first time in Leipzig, the dramatic form is as much attributable to the early 18thcentury Lutheran custom of performing Easter plays as it is to the shape of the secular materials from which it was constructed.

The performances are both exquisite, partaking of the intensity and artistry which has characterized Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir’s recording of the last couple of years. During the late 90s, it often seemed that Gardiner and his instrumental and vocal associates had lost some of the spark that characterized their earlier work and, unfortunately, many of the Pilgrimage recordings sound a bit weary and drawn even though sung and played with technical perfection. Perhaps it is the freedom and purpose that came with the creation of Solo Dei Gloria or perhaps it is just that revival of power and inspiration characteristic of the late careers of many great artists but Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir have, over the last five years, gifted listeners with a sequence of incredible performances. The Actus Tragicus and Easter Oratorio are of that same high calibre and should take one through the Easter weekend nicely, with the Actus Tragicus forming a perfect backdrop for Holy Saturday reflections and the Oratorio serving as the soundtrack for Easter celebrations.