St. Matthew Passion at the Bach festival in Leipzig

Every year, some 70,000 people descend on the eastern German city of Leipzig over the course of just 10 days. The reason? The Bach Festival. It's dedicated to none other than Johann Sebastian Bach and features concerts in the very spaces he once performed.

In this DW Festival Concert, we get to hear selections from a marvelous performance of the St. Matthew Passion that took place on June 17, 2022, at the Leipzig Bach Festival.

Andreas Reize, the new music director, the Thomaskantor of the Thomanerchor, or St. Thomas Choir, led the famous boys' choir, accompanied by the Academy for Early Music Berlin orchestra and soloists, delighting the audience as they listened under the vaulted ceiling of St. Thomas Church.

Even though the position of Thomaskantor has existed for over 600 years, the post-holders only started being numbered after Bach. That means Bach was literally No. 1. And Reize, who took up the position in 2021, is today just the 18th person to serve as Thomaskantor some 300 years after Bach.

The St. Matthew Passion

The St. Matthew Passion has two parts. The first starts with Judas betraying Jesus to the high priests and ends with Jesus being taken prisoner. In the second, Jesus is tried, denied by Peter, crucified and buried.

Bach probably premiered the work in 1727. But Andreas Reize decided to use a later version: "The version that tends to be performed today is the version from 1736, which we have as an original handwritten score, beautifully written."

Still the 300th anniversary of the original performance will also be marked: "Though it's not entirely clear, we generally assume that the premiere took place in 1727. That's why we'll have a big celebration in 2027 in Leipzig, as well as elsewhere in the world."

The St. Matthew Passion is Bach's largest orchestral work and funnily enough, he always composed Jesus as a bass voice. The music calls for multiple soloists, two choirs and two orchestras, and has become a crown jewel of Protestant church music.

The text of the passion is mostly based on the Gospel of Matthew and church songs, but some arias also include verses penned by the writer Friedrich Henrici under the pseudonym "Picander." He was a contemporary of Bach, and the composer regarded him very highly, though, interestingly, the writer was known for comedies featuring tasteless gags and improper jokes. Bach is said to have laid out strict guidelines for his aria lyrics.

Michael Maul, the director of the Leipzig Bach Festival, even describes the work as a "musical wonder of the world": In Bach's time, it all took place in the Good Friday vesper service. That means there were three hours of music, and most likely also an hour-long sermon and the liturgy. The whole thing probably lasted around five hours. It's unfortunate we don't know how people reacted to it at the time; there's nothing written, so we don't know whether people liked it or not."

One of two Easter passions

Bach's vocal works, including the St. Matthew Passion, fell into obscurity after his death in 1750. It was only in the 19th century that his cantatas, oratorios and passions started making a comeback, thanks in large part to another composer: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

In 1826, Mendelssohn led a large orchestra in a shortened version of the St. Matthew Passion, reintroducing the work to an audience that responded enthusiastically.

The St. Matthew Passion piece is one of two Easter passions that Bach composed, the other being his St. John Passion, and together, they make up his only complete surviving passions. Bach wrote the St. John Passion during the beginning of his time as the Thomaskantor of the St Thomas Choir in Leipzig, and he premiered the piece in 1724. The St. Matthew Passion came later and is considered to be a more mature and emotional composition.

This article was originally written in German.