The setting is contemporary London, and the participants are yuppie business types, mostly in their 30s. They’re first seen drinking white wine in a bleakly chic restaurant, then in various stages of splitting up, already well-advanced when the hour-long film begins. The result is beautiful to listen to but depressing to watch. Even so, it’s an important first — making Renaissance madrigals accessible through dramatizing them in a sleek contemporary setting.
Last month I praised Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s 1985 version of Bach’s Johannes Passion [Taipei Times, Aug. 27, 2008, Page 14]. So I thought I’d look at a DVD version of the Matthaus Passion, universally considered the greater work. The one I got hold of was by the Choir of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK, issued in Taiwan on the Brilliant Classics label. What a disappointment it has proved!
Firstly, there are no subtitles at all. Instead, a booklet provides the original German text, without translation — as good as useless as far as I’m concerned. Second, the performance is tweely androgynous, to an extent beyond belief. I was well aware of how fey English Anglicanism can be, but nothing prepared me for this pious letdown. Harnoncourt’s strong, extrovert rendering couldn’t be further removed from this self-approving display from England’s academic elite and their minions.
Paradoxically, only soprano Emma Kirby strives to save something of Bach’s native masculine vigor, but the combined efforts of the English epicenes proves too much even for her.
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