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Riccardo Chailly has called it "the greatest tragedy of humanity". Sometimes I wonder, and I'm not sure if that's the case. I wonder how much of the suffering of Christ's Passion has been relived on the trains to Auschwitz, "always on time" with man's horror towards man. Or how much of this suffering simply lives on in everyday life, in a gratuitous "no," perhaps said absentmindedly, in a denial of happiness burdened with childish and innocent malice. Because the "St Matthew Passion" is not only one of the greatest musical monuments of all time. It is above all a work suspended between the two cardinal points of every man's life: love and death.
"Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben", sings the soprano. With the thin tremble of the flute and the two oboes supporting her, weaving an atmosphere alienated with an arachnoid charm, this is the true keystone of the monumental Bach building. "My Lord will die for love". A love that is not "Eros", but that has a truly superior and deeper value and meaning. A love that is "Agape". It is the love that takes on the divine and supernatural connotations of sacrifice and forgiveness. It is the love that fights against the hate of the little crowd, which screams in a fugue the condemnation "Kreutzige!". Or the heart burdened with an ineffably inexpressible pain in the dark alto aria "Buss und Reu". And the musical power of this Passion is enormous too. Two choirs, two opposing orchestras, a children's choir. In a swirl of emotions that spans all of man's feelings. From the trust and tender abandonment of "Ich will dir mein Herze schenken", to the austere and hallucinatory atmosphere of the choral fantasy "O Mensch, bewein' dein Suende gross". From the mystical fervor of the bass that intones "Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder" - wonderfully transfigured in the melodic line of the violin - to the tenor who proclaims "Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen", even while knowing he cannot stay awake during the agony at Gethsemane. Because in pain, as in death, we are always alone. A narrative of extraordinary intensity suspended between arias, chorales, and recitatives, where only apparently does death win. Because "Mein Jesu, gute Nacht", proclaims the choir after Christ's death. And it is simply sleep into which the superior love, that agapic, altruistic one, can fall. It is never death.
And Karl Richter, in this splendid 1958 performance, seems to want to make this message his own in a rendition of crystalline beauty, rich and granite-like. With the splendid voice of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who, like in a lullaby, intones "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein". In a Baroque aria that dissipates like a breeze into a romantic lied. In a modernity, both human and musical, that is truly unfathomable. Like the mystery of a love that perpetually triumphs over our mortality and our misery.
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