ST JOHN PASSION REIMAGINED CONTENTS Tap on an item in the list to jump to that section Tap to return to this page Welcome 4 About the Music 5 …and the Composers 8 Texts and Translations 10 Artist Biographies 26 Sydney Philharmonia Chamber Singers 30 Sydney Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra 31 Our Supporters 32 About Us 34 Sydney Philharmonia Choirs dedicates this performance to the memory of dear friend and artistic colleague Taryn Fiebig(1972–2021) SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS PRESENTS ST JOHN PASSION REIMAGINED ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY DEBORAH CHEETHAMand MATTHEW DOYLE Tarimi Nulay – Long time living here† JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH St John Passion: Part I with JOSEPH TWIST Heaven, Tear Apart (Himmel reiße)*† INTERVAL St John Passion: Part II with BROOKE SHELLEY Ein Bächlein im Bach*† .1738). Elizabeth Scott conductor c Richard Butler tenor (Evangelist) Andrew O’Connor bass-baritone (Christ) Celeste Lazarenko soprano Sian Sharp mezzo-soprano Nicholas Jones tenor David Greco baritone Sydney Philharmonia Chamber Singers Sydney Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Fiona Ziegler concertmaster Easter Saturday, 3 April 2021, 1pm The Concourse, Chatswood * Premiere † Commissioned as part of our 100 Minutes of New Australian Music centenary project in 2020. We’re delighted to be performing these works in our 2021 season. This performance will run for approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes including a 20-minute interval THE FIRST PAGE FROM BACH’S HANDWRITTEN SCORE OF THE PASSION ACCORDING TO JOHN ( WELCOME It is an absolute honour for me to be conducting this awe-inspiring work in a “re-imagination” that was originally designed to celebrate the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Centenary in 2020. During Bach’s life, the St John Passion was an ever-evolving work, with several revisions and changes made by the composer. It’s exciting to maintain this tradition and to be able to incorporate reflections and voices from Australian composers, inspired by the majesty and power of Bach’s writing to reflect on events in their own lives. My first real encounter with this great work was during my studies in Hungary, when I was invited by a fellow student to be the soprano soloist in her father’s church choir’s Good Friday performance of the St John Passion in Haugesund, Norway. For a young Australian, so far from home, the experience was life changing – I was so moved by the power of the music, the collaboration of the choir and orchestra and, of course, the opportunity to perform it in a country of such beauty and such extremes. I was lucky enough to perform the soprano solos again in Oberstdorf, Germany and, since returning to Australia, I have prepared choirs for this work several times, as well as (hopefully) converting hundreds of high-school students to its power by conducting excerpts at a NSW Public Schools State Music Camp. For me, the St John Passion – from its opening chorus of restless foreboding to its final chorus of acceptance and peace – is a journey of discovery of the human condition experienced through unfathomably exquisite music. Thank you for joining us! Elizabeth Scott Music Director VOX Acknowledgement of Country Tarimi Nulay – Long time living here was the beginning of 2020 and we hope that this commissioned for our Centenary year as a special piece will be part of our performances choral Acknowledgement of Country to for many years to come. Deborah Cheetham commence all concerts in the season. It was and Matthew Doyle have created a work that premiered at the Dawn Chorus performance explores a profound cultural and spiritual on the steps of the Sydney Opera House at reflection of the land on which we sing. SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS 2021 ///// 4 DRAMA AND REFLECTION St John Passion Reimagined Imagine you’re a Leipzig Lutheran, it’s Good Friday in This performance of 1724, and you’re attending Vespers at the St Nicholas Bach’s St John Passion Church. It will be a long service: in addition to the cantor incorporates two specially Bach’s brand new setting of the Passion, there will be a commissioned musical sermon of half an hour or more in the middle, an old Latin motet at the end and congregational chorale singing. But ‘reflections’. Joseph Bach’s music will occupy the lion’s share of the time and Twist’s fiercely dramatic there will be instruments in church again, following the Heaven, Tear Apart will be aural austerity of Lent. In many ways, this first heard after the chorale performance of the Passion according to St John will take ‘Wer hat dich so on the character of a concert and it’s telling that the flyer geschlagen’ (No.11) in Bach prepared announcing the venue (St Nicholas rather Part I and Brooke than the St Thomas Church) addresses its readers as ‘Auditoribus’ – the audience of listeners rather than the Shelley’s more reflective congregation of worshippers. Perhaps your imagination Ein Bächlein im Bach will doesn’t need to stretch very far after all as you sit here in be heard after the chorale the Concourse for a concert on Easter Saturday, although ‘In meines Herzens the seats today will be more comfortable. Grunde’ (No.26) in Part II. In the century before Bach, the Good Friday recitation of the Passion, or story of the Crucifixion, had been relatively simple: the clergy chanting the parts of the Evangelist and Christ, the choir providing the voice of the people and minor characters, the congregation responding with chorales or hymns. But by the end of the 17th century, the Passion tradition had collided with the new genre of the sacred oratorio – essentially biblical operas without costumes, sets or staging that neatly sidestepped the prohibition of opera during Lent. The Passion-oratorio injected an exceptional level of drama and musical complexity into the Good Friday liturgy and it was still a relatively new phenomenon when Bach took on the role of cantor in Leipzig in 1723. Perhaps this is why his wary employers had made him agree to write works ‘which would not be of an operatic nature, but would rather excite the listener to greater piety’. SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS 2021 ///// 5 THE MUSIC A traditional opera features recitatives musical palette. Nowhere is this more (speech-like singing) for the dialogue that apparent than in the arias with obbligato solo moves the plot along, arias with more poetic lines for instruments such as the pair of violas texts for the expression of emotion, and d’amore in the sensuous tenor aria ‘Erwäge’ choruses for scene-setting atmosphere and (Part II, No.20) or the viola da gamba, which context. A Bach Passion-oratorio turns these matches the expressive power of the human theatrical conventions to spiritual purpose. voice in the alto aria ‘Es ist vollbracht’ (Part II, The Evangelist or Gospel author, in this case No.30). At the same time, the idea of personal John, is the eyewitness and his narration is reflection that permeates Bach’s music has written exclusively as recitative. The voice of been extended with two modern musical Christ – a bass – is also written as recitative. reflections, commissioned for this program. The remaining soloists take on small roles in These commissions were originally intended the narrative (Peter, Pilate, a maid, and so on) for Sydney Philharmonia’s Centenary year. but, more significantly, they sing arias that And, during the course of the long delay, the meditate on the drama of the story, as if placement of the new works within the offering personal responses and prayers. The structure of Bach’s work has been given much chorus divides its time between the role of the thought. Joseph Twist’s piece, in using a text crowd – its often savage music bringing that Bach cut from his final libretto and a visceral realism to the enactment of the quoting directly from its musical material, Crucifixion story and making it a real almost demands to be placed in the same protagonist in the drama – and the singing of location in Part I. Meanwhile, Brooke Shelley contemplative chorales. alludes to motifs from throughout Bach’s work Embracing both the immediacy of storytelling in a reflective way; for this reason, it has been and more lyrical reflection, the St John placed – like a reminiscence – towards the Passion emerges as a bold and exhilarating end of the performance. fusion of drama and reflection, in which the Joseph Twist composed Heaven, Tear Apart participants – soloists and chorus alike – while visiting his family in Australia over appear as if contemporary witnesses.No one Christmas 2019, as bushfires consumed so could have argued against the spiritual intent much of the country. The anger, frustration, of this ‘sermon in sound’ or its fidelity to devastation and chaos led him to the text of an John’s gospel account, but such dramatic aria (‘Himmel, reiße’) that Bach added to the intensity – unprecedented in Leipzig St John Passion for its second performance, in churches – must have been shocking.This 1725, and then removed. Just as Bach had afternoon we hear the St John Passion in a done, Twist set the text for baritone soloist and concert with a ‘congregation’ comprising chorus; he also followed Bach’s lead in using people of many faiths or perhaps none, the the joyful serenity of a chorale (‘Jesu, deine liturgical origin of the music abandoned. We Passion’, sung by the chorus) as a foil for the won’t be shocked and we may not be ‘excited explosive drama of the solo line, with its to greater piety’ but the directness of Bach’s dramatic imagery of earthquakes and torment, music, that sensation of contemporary descending into fear and anguish before an immediacy, remains as enthralling as ever.