With the "Triduum Sacrum" of 2019 upon us, for all those, like me, who are tired of hearing the over-hyped Bach passions and are looking for something else of equivalent devotional substance, I recommend the following works by sadly forgotten giants who were intimately woven into the "Bach story":
1. Christoph Graupner: The man chosen ahead of Bach for the Thomaskantor position but who remained in his position in Darmstadt instead wrote a ton of cantatas for holy week. Almost all of them are brilliant and reveal a style as unique as Bach's and, in my view, equally devotional, though in a different way (more of a textural than tuneful approach). Some of these cantatas have been cleverly arranged into passion-like groups and performed on 3 wonderful CDs by Ex Tempore and the Barockorchester Mannheimer Hofkapelle directed by Florian Heyerick. The first two disks can also be found on Spotify.
Disk 1
https://www.chandos.net/products/reviews/CX_5071
Disk 2
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CX%205170
Disk 3 (released just a few weeks ago!):
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/christoph-graupner-passions-kantaten-vol-3/hnum/8977552?lang=en
This is all wonderful music. One of the many highlights for me is the Aria "
Schwert und Stangen, starke Scharen fangen Jesum nicht" (Rough translation: "The mob, with their swords and spears, can't catch Jesus") on the first disc (It is part of the cantata "Christus der uns selig macht"). It mocks the strength of the weapons in the form of swooping strings with a solo oboe basically doing the musical equivalent of "nah nah-nah nah nah - you can't get me" and the soloist repeatedly singing "no no, you can't catch him". In the central section of the da capo aria the concept of love as the only chains binding Jesus' hands are depicted by intricate "chainlinks" spun by the solo oboe against shimmering strings. I find this whole aria to be mesmerising and spiritually uplifting, but not in an over the top way.
2. Gottlob Harrer: The man who directly followed Bach as Thomaskantor (though sadly only survived a couple of years into his tenure) wrote in around 1751 an absolutely brilliant setting of apparently his own German translation of Metastasio's hit "La Passione di Gesu Cristo" that had been set since the 1730 by a slew of mainly Italian composers. Although we don't know it for sure, one can speculate that Harrer's setting was for the first holy week following Bach's death as he seems to be keen to ease the Leipzig audience into the post-Bach period with a very Bachian fugal overture, a dramatic opening accompanied recitative (not unlike the dramatic scenes in some of Bach's passions) followed by a deeply moving opening aria which, from its texture and use of Oboe d'Amore seems to hark back to Bach but also to look forward to the upcoming classical style. After breaking the ice in this way Harrer then releases the full blown "Dresden style" that he must of acquired in his long years of training in that city which involved close connections with Bach's friends, Jan Dismas Zelenka and Johann Adolf Hasse. It seems that Harrer's passion has been performed only once in modern times, a performance in 2005 directed by the late Ludger RĂ©my. To our good fortune, that performance was recorded. Here it is - sadly the person who uploaded it to youtube very regrettably did not disable crossfade, so the start and end of tracks are blurred together - but this only negligibly tarnishes an absolutely gem of a work that absolutely must be performed and recorded in the future:
Conclusion: there is
much more to late baroque holy week music than the (great, but thoroughly overplayed) Bach works.