Two Passions have been scheduled for this year’s Three Choirs Festival, Bach’s St. John Passion and the other by the little-known composer, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, called Die leidende und am Creutz sterbende Liebe Jesu. In the morning we attended a most interesting lecture by Dr. Paul Ellison titled “A Passion to Rival Bach’s?” I was expecting the lecture to be dry and boring, and to my surprise, Dr. Ellison was a most engaging speaker and injected lots of humor and visuals into the talk.

We learned that Bach himself performed Stölzer’s work but “made improvements to it.” Whereas Bach used the text from St. John’s Gospel (written in the past tense), Stölzer wrote his own text in the present tense, and did not name any characters. Both composers were highly regarded in their own time, but although Stölzer was highly prolific (he wrote over 1300 cantatas), much of his work has been lost, mostly due to his successor throwing most his music in the trash!

Tonight we heard the Three Cathedral Choirs in a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion, and as the last note sounded and the Cathedral erupted in applause, I turned to Bill Potter and whispered, “This was a GREAT performance!”

What made the performance so great? The soloists were outstanding: James Gilchrist (Evangelist), Gareth Brynmor John (Christus), Rebecca Hardwick, Ciara Hendrick, Anthony Gregory, and Matthew Brook, all had clear, focused voices and sang effortlessly. The Corelli Orchestra played period instruments such as the transverse flute, viola da gamba, and baroque oboe in a superb and stylistic manner. The Three Cathedrals Choir was fantastic, if a tad overbalancing the small baroque orchestra; however it is always thrilling for me to hear the bell-like sound of the trebles in these cathedral acoustics. They sung the coloratura passages easily, and their rhythm was absolutely secure, especially in the “Wohin” passages. The conductor, Geraint Bowen, kept the tempos lively and driving forward, and tightly controlled the many emotions of the text, yet when Jesus dies, he planned several moments of silence for the impact to sink in.

At the very end of the piece, he waited several crucial seconds for the note to fade away before he dropped his hands slowly, holding off any applause until we could breathe a sigh of relief that we had been in the presence of greatness.

What a powerful presentation this was!

I couldn’t help but think back to our 2004 performance of the St. John Passion and marvel even today that my husband, Carl, conducted the work from the continuo organ, meaning that he played all the secco recitatives himself from the figured bass. Meaning, that it took TONS of work for him to prepare the score! And remember that we brought renowned bass-baritone Max van Egmond from Amsterdam to sing the part of Jesus. Yes, THAT Max van Egmond who had sung the part of Jesus on many recordings. In the rehearsal when Carl heard that voice singing in front of him, he completely broke down and had to stop to compose himself. “I couldn’t believe that I was conducting ‘Jesus’ and he was standing in front of me!”

In the late morning, we heard a presentation of Ralph Vaughan Williams collection of folksongs presented by the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, Broomdasher (a folk group), and Coracle, a trio of accordion, reed instruments and stringed instruments. The concert was called “From Pub to Pulpit” which reminded me of the Lutheran Church of Honolulu’s history book called “For Beer and the BIble”! We heard how several of the folksongs Vaughan Williams collected became standard hymntunes, and then the audience was invited to join in the singing. Examples of this were SINE NOMINE, KINGSFOLD, DANBY and MONKS GATE. This was really a lot of fun, to hear the folk song first, and then to hear and sing the hymn, with its cleaned-up lyrics!

I especially enjoyed the talents of Coracle (Paul Hutchinson, Karen Wimhurst and Anna Tam) who incorporated a “free flowing mix of reeds…..clarinets and accordion….cello, nyckelharpa, viola da gamba and hurdy gurdy” in their fun and improvisational performance. Check out their unusual sound here, which “brings together the talents, imagination and creativity of three artists with vastly different backgrounds, who have come together through their love of traditional music cut through with experimentation, boldness, humour and risk. The British folk tradition at its very heart with eddies of contemporary classical and splashes of early music, ebbs and flows, squalls and flurries – each gig is an exhilarating journey of exploration and enjoyment.”

I loved their performance so much I even bought one of their CDs.