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BACH St. Mark Passion (Grychtolik reconstruction) • Markus Teutschbein, cond; Gudrun Sidonie Otto (sop); Terry Wey (alt); Daniel Johannsen (Evangelist, ten); Hanno Müller-Brachmann (Jesus); Stephen MacLeod (bs); Knabenkantorei Basel; Capriccio Barock O • RONDEAU 609091 (2 CDs: 113:50 )

Bach & Grychtolik: St Mark Passion Audio CD Rondeau

Recently, in 38:2, I reviewed a recording of the St. Mark Passion, also released by Rondeau but conducted by Jörg Breding. In that review, I provided a lengthy (perhaps too lengthy for some tastes) and detailed overview of the history of various reconstructions of this work for which only the libretto survives, but the music for which is generally thought to have been largely a pastiche that Bach cobbled together from previous creations, with the lion’s share coming from the BWV 198 Trauerode. In that review, I mentioned in passing that documents uncovered in 2009 from a Russian archive show that Bach had revised the work between its first definitively known performance in 1731 and a later one in 1744 to include two additional arias. Lo and behold, we now have here a new musical reconstruction of this work by harpsichordist and musicologist Alexander Grychtolik, the first to reconstruction of this work by harpsichordist and musicologist Alexander Grychtolik, the first to include those two additional arias: “Ich lasse dich, mein Jesus, nicht” and “Will ich doch gar gerne schweigen” (Nos. 12b and 33b in the libretto). Grychtolik allots them respectively to the tenor and alto; the first lasts five minutes, the second only 90 seconds.

Since in that previous review I endorsed the Breding recording as the best option for this work, the most immediate question is: How does the Grychtolik reconstruction compare with the Simon Heighes one used by Breding? The short answer is that they are quite different; indeed, less than half of the music utilized by them (the opening and closing choruses, the chorales, and three of the arias) is identical. Readers of my previous review may recall that the major gaps to be filled in are all the recitative material, plus suitable parody adaptations for at least two arias (not counting the two additional ones in the 1744 revised version). For the recitative, Heighes chose to compose his own in the style of Bach for Mark 14:1–25, and thereafter to utilize recitative from an earlier St. Mark Passion usually attributed to Reinhold Keiser, a work Bach is known to have performed in Leipzig. Grychtolik has chosen to adapt recitative passages from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and St. John Passion instead. I personally have very mixed feelings about this procedure. On the one hand, Keiser’s recitatives, while musically intelligent, do not quite sound like Bach, and so to use Bach’s own music is arguably an inherently superior alternative. However, when that music is so familiar from other and very specific contexts, to hear it utilized in a very different context remains quite jarring, a prime example being the choral interjection of the priests of the Sanhedrin, “Ja nicht auf das Fest.” Yes, it’s Bach, but it sounds entirely out of place; I just can’t get used to it, even after a couple dozen hearings over some two months, and actually prefer the Heighes/Keiser recitatives, but that may just be me. To complicate matters further, Grychtolik also has chosen different music than Heighes for three of the original six arias: “Falsche Welt” in part I, and “Angenehmes Mordgeschrei” and “Welt und Himmel nehmt zu Ohren” in part II. (And, to muddy the waters further yet, the music that Breding uses for “Angenehmes Mordgeschrei” and Grychtolik employs for “Welt und Himmel nehmt zu Ohren” is decidedly similar, though not identical.) I find the Heighes adaptations more convincing; but then, I’m also used to them, so I may simply be harboring a previously established prejudice. And, of course, with Grychtolik one gets the two additional arias. In sum, I can’t say that one reconstruction is definitely superior to the other; but others may establish a clear preference between them, and avid Bach collectors will likely wish to have both.

How do the recordings compare in quality as performances of their respective versions? Once again, there is not an entirely clear-cut verdict to offer. Both sets of choral and instrumental ensembles are equally capable and provide no substantive basis for distinction. From the standpoint of conducting, I have a slight but clear preference for Breding over Teutschbein; his tempos are just a little more brisk, and his phrasing a degree more fluid. Likewise, I have a similar slight but clear preference for how the orchestral and choral forces under Breding are recorded; in the Teutschbein version these sound a bit recessed by comparison, though in both sets the soloists are sonically right up front. On the other hand, Teutschbein has overall the better team of soloists, with the biggest difference being in the dominant role of the Evangelist, where Daniel Johannsen is in every way markedly superior to Achim Kleinlein under Breding. Given that both of them also sing the solo tenor aria “Mein Tröster ist nicht mehr bei mir” that opens part II, and that Grychtolik gives the tenor a second aria as well, that alone may be enough to sway many in favor of this new recording. Contrary to my usual preference for female over male altos, I also markedly prefer Terry Wey under Teutschbein to Anne Bierwirth under Breding; the former sings out securely with rich tone and vibrato, whereas the latter unwisely employs a much more “straight” tone with much less appealing results. A further bonus for Teutschbein is veteran Baroque bass singer Stephan MacLeod, who excels in both several comprimario roles (besting Albrecht Pöhl under Breding) and the aria “Welt und Himmel” (where Michael Jäckel under Breding also excels, albeit in a completely different and to my taste much superior musical setting). On the other hand, Breding definitely has the superior soprano in Veronika Winter over Gudrun Sidonie Otto, and by a smaller margin I likewise prefer Michael Jäckel to Hanno Müller-Brachmann as Jesus. In sum, then, for conducting, the soprano, and the role of Jesus, I prefer the Breding version; for the

Evangelist and the alto, tenor, and other bass solos, the nod goes to Teutschbein. Evangelist and the alto, tenor, and other bass solos, the nod goes to Teutschbein.

In the end, then, I can’t simply come down in favor of one version over another. While a scorecard of objective factors might point to the Grychtolik reconstruction under Teutschbein overall, I still find myself gravitating back to Heighes under Breding as being a more consistent and satisfactory integration of the disparate compositional elements. But both are worthwhile, and readers should audition both and choose one (or both) according to their tastes. Whatever that personal verdict, however, this newcomer is definitely recommended. James A. Altena

This article originally appeared in Issue 39:1 (Sept/Oct 2015) of Fanfare Magazine.

BACH (reconstructed by Heighes) St. Mark Passion • Jörg Breiding, cond; Achim Kleinlein (Evangelist); Albrecht Pöhl (Christus); Veronika Winter (sop); Anne Bierwirth (alt); Michael Jäckel (bs); Hannover Ch; Hannover Hofkapelle • RONDEAU 7015/16 (2 CDs: 103:20 )

BACH (reconstructed by Koopman) St. Mark Passion • Ton Koopman, cond; Christoph Prégardien (Evangelist); Peter Kooy (Christus); Sibylla Rubens (sop); Bernhard Landauer (alt); Paul Agnew (ten); Klaus Mertens (bs); Boys of the Breda Sacrament Ch; Amsterdam Baroque Ch & O • APEX 2564 645077 (2 CDs: 118:23)

Bach: Markus-Passion Audio CD Audio CD Rondeau Production

Bach: St Mark Passion Audio CD Apex

The St. Mark Passion is the great white whale of the Bach corpus. No other missing composition of Bach has been the subject of so much speculation, or the object of so many attempts at reconstruction of its music to match its surviving text. For various reasons, among them the fact that the St. Mark Passion contains fewer arias (only six) and choruses (only two) but more chorales (16) than the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, it has been generally assumed that the work was largely a parody—i.e., Bach composed very little original music for it apart from the recitatives, but instead recycled various previously existing compositions, to which his librettist Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici, 1700–1764) wrote texts with an appropriate metrical fit. Various reconstructions have therefore drawn upon that portion of Bach’s musical corpus definitely known to have been composed before 1731 (the first solidly established date for a performance of the work, though musicologist Gustav Adolph Theill has argued for an earlier performance in 1728) in attempts to determine the most likely candidates for adaptation. However, some reconstructions have borrowed a few pieces written likely candidates for adaptation. However, some reconstructions have borrowed a few pieces written after 1731, arguing that metrical fit and other evidence suggest those to be parody adaptations from lost originals of the Passion. (A revised version, to which Bach added two new arias, is known to have been performed in 1734 and 1744, with the evidence for the latter unearthed from a Russian archive as recently as 2009.)

The principles for determining Bach’s methods of musical parody were first laid out by musicologist Wilhelm Rust (an editor of the original Bach-Gesellschaft Edition of Bach’s collected works) in 1873, and further elaborated by Arnold Schering (who later became a rabid Nazi collaborator in musical education circles) in 1921. In 1926 Charles Sanford Terry, followed in the 1940s by Friedrich Smend, identified most of the chorale settings (from the collection of Bach’s chorales edited by his son C. P. E. Bach) corresponding to the Passion’s chorales. In 1974 musicologist Alfred Dürr, a principal editor of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, published a detailed report of possible parody sources for the St. Mark Passion as part of an edition of the St. Matthew Passion. Most subsequent musicological work has followed their leads, with some modifications.

It was Rust who first proposed that Bach recycled into the St. Mark Passion much of the 1727 Trauerode, BWV 198, a one-occasion piece composed for the funeral of Christiane Eberhardine, the Electress of Saxony—specifically, three arias (which became “Er kommt, er ist vorhanden,” “Mein Tröster ist nicht mehr bei mir,” and “Mein Heiland”) and the opening and closing choruses of the Passion. Most but not all reconstructions have accepted his argument, as well as Smend’s suggestion that the aria “Falsche Welt” was adapted from the cantata Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54. At least one turba chorus—possibly two or three—are now believed to have been later adapted by Bach for the Christmas Oratorio and have been retrofitted from that work, while (as already mentioned) the settings for the 16 chorales can all be recovered from Bach’s collected chorale texts. Various candidates have been proposed for the remaining two arias (“Angenehmes Mordgeschrei” and “Welt und Himmel”) and some of the 10 brief turba choruses, with no consensus having emerged.

Various solutions have been adopted regarding the recitatives and turba chorus passages. Some reconstructions simply provide for the text to be spoken or omitted. Others have borrowed the recitatives from a St. Mark Passion by another composer. That most commonly used is one generally attributed to Reinhold Keiser (1674–1739), a work Bach copied out and used in both Weimar (c. 1713) and Leipzig (1727). (Some musicologists now credit the work to Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns (1637– 1718), but most sources continue to list it as being by Keiser.) This solution has the problem that the recitative in that setting begins at Mark 14:26 instead of at Mark 14:1 as in the Picander text; some reconstructions have either left those initial 25 verses to be spoken, or else simply omitted them and interspersed the chorales and arias from that section within later sections, while others have had sung recitatives adapted or newly composed for them. Other alternatives have been an anonymous setting from a 1707 Hamburg manuscript (which also begins at Mark 14:26); the c. 1765 St. Mark Passion of Gottfried August Homilius (1714–1785); and the 1668 St. Mark Passion of the Italian expatriate to Germany Marco Giuseppe Peranda (c. 1625–1675). Finally, some versions have employed newly composed recitative throughout, sometimes in the style of Bach and sometimes (shades of Luciano Berio’s completion of Puccini’s Turandot) in a modern musical idiom.

All told, there now appear to be at least 22 different reconstructions of Bach’s St. Mark Passion extant. That said, there is actually far less variety among them than that figure might suggest. With one major exception (Ton Koopman—see below), all more or less follow the Rust-Smend framework for four of the arias, most of the chorales, and the initial and final choruses; variations are concentrated in the two remaining arias, the other chorales, and above all in the recitatives and turba choruses. Most versions have started from and built upon the first and most modest reconstruction, by Diethard Hellmann in 1964, which consists of only five arias (omitting “Angenehmes Mordgeschrei”), 12 chorales, and the two main choruses, with no recitatives or turba choruses.

Of these 22 versions, 17 are neatly summarized in tabular form (pp. 48–50) with supplemental details (pp. 50–60) in the highly informative 2010 M. Mus. thesis of Paula Fourie, from Pretoria University, “A (pp. 50–60) in the highly informative 2010 M. Mus. thesis of Paula Fourie, from Pretoria University, “A Critical Study of Five Reconstructions of Bach’s Markuspassion BWV 247” [the versions by Andreas Glöckner, Andor Gomme, Simon Heighes, Johannes H. E. Koch, and Ton Koopman], available online at upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-07062011-122302/unrestricted/dissertation.pdf. (Fourie also provides a table of Smend’s proposals for the chorale settings on pp. 45–46, and details of Hellmann’s reconstruction on pp. 52–53.)

In addition to the versions listed by Fourie, I have also found citations to the following:

- 1974 Neithard Bethke (with recitatives composed in Bach’s style);

- 1994 Konstantin Köppelmann (with recitatives composed in Bach’s style);

- 2001 Matthias Heep (with various parts composed in a modern musical idiom);

- 2003 Guido Mancusi (with recitatives composed in Bach’s style);

- 2005 Thomas Gebhardt (with recitatives taken from the Keiser Passion).

For those who can read German, further details regarding these can be found online at: klassik- musica-classica.blogspot.com/2013/03/musik-zur-passionszeit-iv-bachs-markus.html klassik-musica- classica.blogspot.com/2013/03/musik-zur-passionszeit-iv-bachs-markus_29.html klassik-musica- classica.blogspot.com/2013/03/musik-zur-passionszeit-iv-bachs-markus_30.html tamino- klassikforum.de/index.php?page= Thread&threadID=15730

This brings us in turn to recordings of the St. Mark Passion. When I first undertook background research for this review, I was familiar with only two previous sets, the ones conducted respectively by Roy Goodman and Ton Koopman. To my amazement (and I suspect to that of many readers of these lines as well), however, the online Bach cantatas site (Bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV247.htm) lists no fewer than 23 extant recordings of various reconstructions (not including the Koopman DVD release and the present set). But once again, the number that come into serious consideration is significantly lessened once one eliminates recordings held only in archives or that appeared only on private LP or CD labels, reducing the count to 16 releases of eight different realizations. First, a tabular listing:

Date Label Timing Conductor Edition 1965 Erato 51:53 W. Gönnenwein D. Hellmann 1983 Calig unknown Diethard Hellmann D. Hellmann 1984 Bongiovanni 81:38 Joszef Bok S. Sutkowski & T. Maciejewski 1994 Keravan 45:50 Pekka Laakkonen D. Hellmann 1995 Philips 69:10 Peter Schreier D. Hellmann 1996 Eres 48:18 Hans Gebhad D. Hellmann 1996 Brilliant 100:50 Roy Goodman S. Heighes 1998 ASV 109:41 Geoffrey Webber A. Gomme 1998 Prospect 84:33 Mathias Michaely J. H. E. Koch 1999 Erato 118:23 Ton Koopman T. Koopman 2000 Challenge 118:00 Ton Koopman T. Koopman 2002 Kirkeling 73:40 E. Higginbottom D. Hellmann 2004 Raumklang 84:49 Volker Bräutigam V. B r ä u t i g a m 2004 Music Art unknown Ingo Schulz J. H. E. Koch

2009 Carus 73:15 Michael A. Willens A. Glöckner 2009 Carus 73:15 Michael A. Willens A. Glöckner 2014 Rondeau 103:20 Jörg Breiding S. Heighes

Next, some brief additional notes on these versions. The first two recordings were issued only on LP and are out of print. (A private LP recording of the otherwise unrepresented Gustav Adolph Theill realization, which features a young Klaus Mertens as Jesus, apparently can still be ordered from the Johanneskantorei Köln Klettenberg; see the link through the Bach cantatas web site.) The ASV recording is the only commercial CD version out of print. The wide variations in timings for recordings of the Diethard Hellmann edition result from the use of shorter or longer recensions; the shorter version omits all recitatives andturba choruses, and uses only seven chorale settings, whereas the longer version employs spoken narration of the recitatives and turba choruses and uses 12 chorale settings.

1) The premiere recording, by Wolfgang Gönnenwein, the South German Madrigal Choir, and the Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra, was issued on Erato in Europe and on Epic and the Musical Heritage Society in the USA.

2) The Calig recording was a single LP and is presumably the same version as on the previous Gönnenwein release. It was reviewed briefly and negatively by Edward Strickland in 8:1 and in greater detail and more positively by J. F. Weber in 7:6, who mentions that the Gönnenwein recording received generally “lackluster” reviews.

3) The Bongiovanni issue of a live performance was given a brief and mixed reception by Strickland, this time in 12:5. The edition by Stefan Sutkowski and Tadeusz Maciejewski is a revision of Hellmann’s, with additions adapted from the St. Matthewand apocryphal St. Luke Passions.

4) The 1994 Keravan issue is a real oddity—a translation of the Hellmann version into Finnish!

5) The 1995 Philips release, with Peter Schreier conducting the Leipzig Chamber Choir and Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum, also features Schreier as the narrator of the spoken Evangelist text in the longer Hellmann version.

6) The Eres CD conducted by Hans Gebhad reverts to the shorter Hellmann version.

7) The 1996 recording of the Simon Heighes reconstruction, with Roy Goodman, the Ring Ensemble of Finland, and the European Union Baroque Orchestra, was originally issued by Musica Oscura but is now available from Brilliant Classics. Setting aside the private LP recording of the Theill version, this is the first recording that can justly lay claim to being a comprehensive reconstruction of the St. Mark Passion. Beginning with the Hellmann edition as a foundation, Heighes drew upon other works by Bach for the remaining arias, used the recitatives of the Keiser setting, and composed recitatives in a congruent style for the text of Mark 14:1-25 not set by Keiser.

8) The Andor [Austin Harvey] Gomme version in the ASV recording is a variant of the Heighes edition (Heighes and Gomme were colleagues). It omits Mark 14:1-25, moves the arias in that section elsewhere, and chooses different parody settings for the two arias not covered by Rust and Sment. Ralph V. Lucano reviewed it favorably in 22:6 while dismissing the Goodman recording as “unidiomatic” and damning its soloists as “poor, atrocious even.” (For a very different assessment by me, see below.)

9) For his edition, Johannes H. E. Koch created recitatives in a modern tonal idiom with organ accompaniment. The 1998 Prospect recording of that version, with Mathias Michaely, the Ostfälisches Vocal Ensemble, and South German Baroque Orchestra, utilizes a full-size choir and period instruments in a reverberant acoustic. The soloists are all good; the tempos relaxed.

10) and 11) Regarding Ton Koopman’s highly idiosyncratic reconstruction, see the discussion further 10) and 11) Regarding Ton Koopman’s highly idiosyncratic reconstruction, see the discussion further below.

12) Another oddball issue, the 2002 Kirkeling Kulturversted release, with Edward Higginbottom conducting the Norsk Baroque Orchestra, reverts to the long Hellmann version with recitatives spoken in Norwegian.

13) Still odder yet is the reconstruction by Volker Bräutigam, who conducts the Cantores Lipsiensis and Leipzig Baroque Orchestra on a 2004 Raumklang issue. Bräutigam composed his recitatives in a 12-tone idiom, replete with gongs and other modern instruments. (I listened to it briefly, and the less said of it, the better.)

14) As with the 1998 Prospect set, the 2004 Music Art recording conducted by Ingo Schulz employs the Koch realization. (I have not heard this release.)

15) The Andreas Glöckner realization on the 2009 Carus CD is a conservative revision of the longer Hellmann version, differing in the choice of some of the chorale settings based on more recent musicological research. George Chien reviewed it favorably in 33:6. (Of the five versions she compares in depth, Fourie endorses the Glöckner version, on the grounds that it is the most complete realization of the St. Mark Passion that includes only music by Bach and no-one else.)

16) The newly issued Rondeau set to be discussed (eventually!) here, which uses the Simon Heighes reconstruction.

How to make a decision among these versions? That depends on several factors. First, while I agree with Fourie that none of the complete reconstructions with sung recitative from other hands sounds fully convincing as Bach, I disagree with her and still prefer that solution to the alternative. Even though I speak German, I find spoken recitative to be completely unsatisfactory here, and the two Hellmann versions and their near descendants (Sutkowski/Maciejewski and Glöckner) are thus too bare-bones to be more than a set of excerpts. Although the Kaiser recitatives sound just enough unlike Bach to be a bit unsettling, they are a far better fit than the Modernistic ones by Koch and Bräutigam. Setting aside the Theill version on the private LP as an unknown (and possibly unobtainable) quantity, and the completely different Koopman reconstruction, that leaves only three candidates: the Musica Oscura/Brilliant Classics version with Goodman, the out-of-print ASV version with Webber (reasonably priced used copies are available from Amazon), and the new Rondeau set with Breiding.

Of the two older recordings, each has serious faults. Contrary to Lucano, Goodman and his choral and orchestral forces offer a completely idiomatic and stylish rendition. As for the soloists, Lucano’s dismissal of them as “poor, even atrocious” is quite unfair. Tenor Paul Agnew is superb in his one aria, and Rogers Covey-Crump as the Evangelist and Gordon Jones as Jesus have solid, if lightweight and unremarkable, voices. Treble Connor Burrowes is acceptable in his two arias, though I would much prefer a female soprano. The fly in the ointment is countertenor David James, who is barely passable in “Falsche Welt” but sings some excruciatingly out-of-tune high notes in “Mein Heiland.” The crisp, clear recorded sound and small choir allow for the text to be articulated clearly, although the delivery is rather generic and lacking in inflection. By contrast, Webber’s soloists are quite good across the board, and both they and his chorus sing with much more involvement in the meaning of the texts than do their counterparts under Goodman. Unfortunately, his recording suffers from near-fatal defects. One is the arbitrary dislocation of several chorales and arias due to the complete omission of the text of Mark 14: 1-25. Another is his positively soporific tempos; despite omitting Mark 14: 1-25— about 20 minutes of music in the Goodman recording—his overall timing for the remainder is some nine minutes longer than the entire Goodman recording, or almost 30 minutes longer (110 vs. 80) for the same music in both sets. Between the two, I would take the Goodman recording despite its vocal shortcomings.

Happily, this new Rondeau set, while not ideal, is a major improvement on both of its predecessors, Happily, this new Rondeau set, while not ideal, is a major improvement on both of its predecessors, largely combining the best features of each while sidestepping their worst faults. Conductor Jörg Breiding matches Goodman overall for tempos while bringing to bear much greater emotional commitment, plus a degree of gravitas that Goodman lacks. The large choral forces (over 50 singers) and the period instruments ensemble (about 20 strong) bring an appropriately more weighty sound to bear, although the clarity of diction is somewhat occluded by the cathedral-like sonic ambience. The soloists, if not quite as good as those under Webber, are superior to those under Goodman. Soprano Veronika Winter (who also sings the comprimario role of the Ancilla) is superb; alto Anne Bierwirth is quite able, though her use of straight tone deprives her arias of some vocal color (her occasional touches of vibrato indicate that the requisite warmth of voice is there). As the Evangelist and tenor soloist, Achim Kleinlein has a slightly bleating voice with an incipient beat, which becomes most apparent in his solo aria but generally is not disturbing. Both Albrecht Pöhl as Jesus and Michael Jäckel in the bass aria and other comprimario parts (Judas, High Priest, Peter, Pontius Pilate) have potent bass voices with heavy vibratos more suitable to 19th-century operas, in music that could use a lighter touch, but otherwise sing well. Rondeau provides the rather lavish layout of a slimline double- CD case and 60-page booklet housed inside an outer clamshell cardboard case. The booklet provides an elaborate table of contents. For each track it gives the name(s) of the character(s) singing there; the successive initial phrases sung by each character within a track; the musical form (aria, chorale, etc.); the instrumentation for each sub-section of a track; and the total track timing. Also included are a lengthy essay, bios of all the performers, and a complete German-English libretto. Rather oddly, information on who sings the parts of the Evangelist and Jesus is provided on the back of the clamshell box and the back tray card of the slimline case, but not in the booklet. Also, in what may be a new trend that follows the pattern of DVD releases (I’ve seen it on some other CD issues), the clamshell box and back tray card provide an approximate timing rounded down to the nearest minute. This is simply sloppy and lazy.

Finally, I turn now to Ton Koopman’s edition, originally released on CD by Erato and now reissued on the budget Apex Classics label (without the original libretto), with a live performance also issued on DVD by Challenge Classics in 2000. It is in some ways the oddest man out among competing reconstructions. Alone among all recorded versions, Koopman rejects the Rust-Smend line of musicological descent, and with it the Hellmann edition, for the reconstruction of four arias and the two main choruses. Instead, he states, he used his imagination to place himself in the position of a Bach pupil with the following assignment: “Here is a libretto; set it to music using whatever you find in the works I wrote up until now (1731). What you do not find, compose yourself.” Asserting the Trauerode to be “a much more suitable candidate for a reconstruction of the Köthen Funeral Music than of the St. Mark Passion,” Koopman instead freely raided Bach’s musical corpus for other music to parody that appealed to his own sensibilities. Quite maddeningly, he does not identify a single one of those in his notes to the original Erato set, though a comment dated August 16, 2003, and posted by Riccardo Nughes at bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV247-Koopman.htmhttp: //www.bach- cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV247-Koopman.htm provides the following information (derived from Koopman’s personal web site, tonkoopman.nl):

Movement #/CD Track Musical Form BWV Number/Movement Parodied CD 1 1/1 chorus 25/1 3/3 chorus 24/3 4b/5 chorus 37/1 9/11 chorus 171/1 13/15 aria 182/5 21/23 aria 4/verse 2

23/25 aria 179/3 23/25 aria 179/3 27/29 chorus 135/1 CD 2 28/1 aria 201/5 34/7 chorus 244/36d 38/11 chorus 144/1 40/13 aria 245/13 verse 2 42a/15 chorus 244/30 44/17 chorus 4/verse 1 45/18 aria 207a/7 47/20 chorus 186/1 53/26 chorus 179/1 55/28 chorus 144/1 58b/32 chorus 46/1 60/34 aria 63/3 64/38 chorus 68/1

Koopman’s realization also differs markedly from other versions in other ways as well. For example, his use of different music for the parodies means that the arias (two of which now become duets) have different voice assignments. The number of arias (and duets) is increased from six to seven; whereas there are (rather oddly) no bass arias in most other reconstructions, Koopman’s version has two.

While Koopman’s extremely idiosyncratic version has been almost universally rejected as an authentic reconstruction of Bach’s St. Mark Passion—in particular, it has been heavily criticized for choosing music to parody on the basis of similar theological and emotional motifs rather than proper metrical fit of music and text—it remains a fascinating and musically satisfying creation in its own right. Unlike all other versions, the recitatives sound convincingly like Bach, which gives this realization a unity and sense of narrative momentum that standard alternatives lack; and whatever the problems with metrical fit, some of Koopman’s choices seem truly inspired. The aria “Falsche Welt,” which in the standard reconstruction is a slow-moving lament, is here a coruscating display of corrosive irony. Of course, Koopman also has the advantage of a world-class team of soloists, chorus, and period instrument ensemble which, combined with his own decades of experience as one of Bach’s premier interpreters, attain a performance level which no rival recordings can match. However inauthentic it is musicologically, it works musically, and does so brilliantly.

In the Bach St. Mark Passion reconstruction sweepstakes, this new Rondeau recording takes an easy first place, though purists who want their Bach unadulterated by additions from other hands may prefer the aforementioned Carus CD instead. And, as an idiosyncratic vision of Bach by one of his current major interpreters, the Koopman realization commends itself for those willing to accept it on its own terms as a marvelously engaging performance; both are strongly, though not unconditionally, recommended. James A. Altena

This article originally appeared in Issue 38:2 (Nov/Dec 2014) of Fanfare Magazine.