ny times

A Second Bout of ‘Passion,’ Rawer
Berlin Philharmonic Performs a New ‘St. John Passion’
By: ZACHARY WOOLFEFEB. 27, 2014
BERLIN — Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” is contemplative, a study insuffering and transcendence. His “St. John Passion” is tighter and more angular, a battlefield of action and reaction.
“Matthew” weeps and wonders while “John,” which the Berlin Philharmonicand itsconductor, Simon Rattle, performed on Thursday in a powerful new staging by Peter Sellars at the Philharmonie here, presses forward. “Matthew” is a Mass, “John” an opera.
But not quite. While our sense ofBach has deepened as scholars have learned more about the key role opera played in the world he inhabited, he chose never to write in that genre. It seems there was something he resisted about a formwhose audience consumed art passively.
He created works, the Passions most of all, whose viewers are also, in a sense, participants, constantly questioning themselves and their perspective. Forinstance, the chorus enacting a mob of persecutors suddenly transforms into a huddled band of mourners.

In his 2010 staging of the “St. Matthew Passion” here, Mr. Sellars showed a keen understanding of thestatus of these works as rituals rather than operas. It was a spare, haunting production that consisted physically of little more than dark clothes, simple gestures and some white blocks. Theemphasis was on intense emotion and human connection, with close interaction between the instrumentalists and singers.
With the rich yet raw playing of the Philharmonic under Mr. Rattle, a moving cast ofsoloists and the incisive Berlin Radio Choir, the “St. Matthew Passion” was instantly a classic, a model of the convergence of music and spectacle that has become increasingly important in drawingpeople to orchestras. Released on DVD by the ensemble (at shop.berliner-philharmoniker.de), the production will travel to New York in October fortwo performances at the Park Avenue Armory to open Lincoln...