The Dome, Brighton, Good Friday 3 April 2015

There have been many attempts to stage the Bach Passions in recent years, some more successful than others. This was announced as being in the round rather  than a semi-staging but it still leaves one asking what the expectation was that lay behind the approach. From the point of view of the chorus it certainly made for a more dynamic impact. Singing from memory, the opening chorus had real fire and bite. This was also true of the crowd scenes in the second part where the mob violence was well captured.

However for much of the rest of the time the movement held up the action. One of the great strengths of Bach’s St John is the speed at which it moves, and a very good reason for not having an interval. Here there were long pauses between individual items while singers moved from one part of the building to another, or instrumentalists adjusted to their new positions.

Solo singing was generally of a high standard, with Robert Murray’s Evangelist and Paul Reeves’ Christus particularly impressive. Of the solo singers, the men seemed happier with the staging than the women, who appeared more comfortable when placed on the conventional platform next to the conductor.

James Morgan handled his forces with aplomb and managed to keep everything together with remarkable ease. He was not helped by the lighting which tended to plunge most of us into darkness even when the lit performers were, for many, out of sight. We were invited to sing the chorales with the chorus, but were actually only given four of them, and these not annotated in line with the vocal score.

Musically this was sound throughout but did not gain anything from being performed in this way, and may have been dramatically more effective if given as a single piece with little or no breaks.

The afternoon was not helped by an unexpected breakdown in the box office which led to very long queues in the rain outside the Dome, which in turn led to a very late start. In my many years of attending events at the Dome this has never happened before and it was entirely unclear why it was so on this occasion. Too many people had to rush into the performance with no time to prepare or get a drink etc beforehand. A pity, the musicians deserved better.