As many of you know, a year ago my wife was attacked by this “world virus” called cancer. Not until the day following our first Chicago Bach Project, the St. Matthew Passion, did my family confide in me that she had fourth stage cancer with four to six months to live. While she went through her chemo and Herceptin treatments like a trouper without one word of complaint, I descended into a darkness that only glimpses of Biblical truth and the music of Brahms’ Requiem, which I was fortunate enough to conduct several times in the following weeks, could begin to dispel. Even now as I look at her in complete remission with her healthy skin, I pinch myself with the awareness that it is really her, the emotional aftershocks still with me.
Now it is a year later, and I’m looking forward to the second installment of the Chicago Bach Project and our anniversary of sorts of that life-threatening experience. It is a curious and wonderful coincidence (blessing, would be a better word) that the music I am performing these days—Berlioz’s Te Deum in Dallas, Beethoven Choral Symphony in San Diego, Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast in Strasbourg, and Mendelssohn’s Song of Praise in South Carolina—are all music of ecstatic joy. What a gift it is to experience this music as an expression of the incredible gratefulness I have for God’s gift of life.
But I am keenly aware that I live on this earth with its viruses and in this time frame which some day will cut my life short. Into this context came Jesus to provide us with hope. That story is told no better than in Bach’s St. John Passion, which is the darkest music of all the music I’m privileged to conduct this year. Passion music honors Jesus’ death on Good Friday. As such, it does not deal with Easter. For that we must wait for 2013 when we will perform the great Mass in B Minor with trumpets and timpani fanfaring the resurrection of Jesus.
I feel as if I have already experienced a resurrection of sorts with Anita’s miraculous recovery, but I’m well aware of the fact that all of us will sooner or later succumb to the death of this body. But that is not the end! Bach expresses it magnificently in one of the most poignant moments in his Passion, as a perplexed believer addresses Jesus on the cross:
“My precious Savior, let me ask you,
since you by this time are nailed to the cross
and have said: ‘It is accomplished,’
have I been freed from death?
Can I through your pain and death
inherit the Kingdom of Heaven?
Is redemption of all the world here?
You can, in agony, it is true,
say nothing
but you bow your head
and exclaim in silence: YES!”
How terrible and wonderful is the enigma of life. Both are incomparably expressed in the music of Bach. I hope you can come (visit ChicagoBachProject.com for information) or listen to the concert streaming live (at wfmt.com) on April 4 at 8:00 p.m. CST (9:00 p.m. EST) and be blessed by this music during Holy Week which ultimately celebrates the Easter triumph of the wonderful over the terrible.
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On July 5, 2011, at the Basilica of St. Denis, the hallowed place on the outskirts of Paris where most of France’s kings and queens are buried, we will have the privilege of making the fourth in an SDG-sponsored series of the greatest masterworks of sacred music. This time it will be the granddaddy of them all, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Mr. Tommasini, the lead critic of The New York Times, in his first article of the New Year, wrote poignantly about Bach as the greatest composer of all time, to which I would add that the St. Matthew is the greatest of the greatest. We are then talking about the crème de la crème, the very high point of Western classical music.
I could take your time by writing about the perfect structure, the incredibly powerful drama, the profound theology, the devotional character, and the achingly beautiful music of this masterpiece, but I’d rather simply tell you what this work means to me, why it is my ‘island’ piece and why I’m looking forward to filming it.
My first experience with the work was in my third year in college when my favorite and hugely influential choral conductor, Rolf Espeseth, chose to conclude his tenure with a performance of the St. Matthew and privileged me by letting me conduct all the chorales. Suddenly the composer, who had been for me methodical and complicated, became the composer of a world of images that mesmerized me and moved me to the depths. Bach became central in my studies at The Juilliard School in New York where, as a student, I conducted a number of his cantatas, sang in the Mass in B Minor and directed a community chorus, the Pro Arte Chorale, which in due course performed the St. Matthew at Lincoln Center. I shall never forget the first time I conducted the opening bars in rehearsal with the throbbing bass line under the wailing voices pleading, “Come ye daughters help me lament.” That this sublime music was actually coming out of my hands reduced me to a puddle of tears in front of my musicians.
Subsequent performances at Wolf Trap, at the Aspen Music Festival and in Indianapolis, where I was Music Director of the ISO, all brought enormous rewards and deepened my knowledge of the score. Then in 1985, the 300th anniversary of the composer’s birth, I was asked to conduct both the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, plus the Mass in B Minor, during Holy Week at Carnegie Hall. This extraordinary experience bonded me with Bach for the rest of my life, and when I took the music directorship of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris, the first thing I did was to approach the Archbishop of Paris, Jean Marie Lustiger, about performing these three great Bach masterpieces in three-year cycles at Easter time in the Notre Dame Cathedral. His enthusiastic response allowed my orchestra to be the only professional ensemble to perform in the Cathedral, and for ten years this cycle became a Paris focal point at Easter and the high point in our orchestral season.
Now Soli Deo Gloria is launching the same cycle in Chicago, beginning this Easter with the St. Matthew Passion at the beautiful St. Vincent de Paul Parish on April 20. (It is not to be missed). But of all of these performances, the big one is still to come. And that will be the DVD filming at the St. Denis Festival this July. It will be the fourth in a series of five DVDs sponsored by SDG and filmed by Europe’s premiere classical music/video company, Ideale Audience. To date we have filmed Bach’s Mass in B Minor at Notre Dame, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in Lisbon, and Haydn’s The Creation in the Naarden Church outside of Amsterdam. They are all brilliant productions that will soon be available for commercial release. (The fifth production will be of the Messiah filmed in London with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, 2012.)
Why are we doing this, and why is the St. Matthew so important? First of all, I feel, and certainly SDG feels, that our world desperately needs this music. Great sacred music lifts us up from the heaviness of our world, the frequent drudgery of our lives, and gives us hope in the midst of tragedy. Sacred music is not itself the source of hope, but points to the Source and is a conduit for people who don’t darken the doors of a church or open the Scriptures. In Europe in particular, sacred music concerts, often given in otherwise empty churches and cathedrals, are what a secular generation substitutes for a communal spiritual experience. And I can tell you from experience with the St. Matthew performances that people are moved to the core. Minds and hearts are awakened to a dimension of life not previously experienced.
This is the purpose of these DVDs. They will be listened to by millions in their homes, on their computers, on television sets. In an age when pop music floods every corner of our lives, the music that has blessed, inspired, calmed and challenged countless generations throughout history has the capacity to transform and purify us today. I have high hopes that this particular St Matthew Passion DVD, with its great cast of spectacular soloists, chorus and orchestra, will capture an inspired performance born of great experience and passionate conviction.
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I decided to take a little ‘vacation’ prior to the DVD project coming up in Amsterdam, so as to immerse myself completely in Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (The Creation). And so I find myself on a beautiful island off the coast of Brittany where the sunrise, the changing sea, the smell of flowers, the rocks and hills all inspire me to study the text (Milton and the Bible) and the notes of this extraordinary score which describe the beauties of God’s creation.
Fortunately, I’m not learning notes, as I’ve done The Creation many times, but, rather honing them, searching for new meanings, and becoming so comfortable with them that the music will flow completely naturally for this once in a life-time occasion. The privilege of making this DVD with some of the finest artists in the business is enormous but daunting. A concert is a moment in time, the memory of which gradually dims, but a recording is like a printed book which cannot be changed. You had better get it right. To that end I am spending two weeks looking afresh and marking a complete new set of parts for the musicians.
Through all this preparation I am carried by Haydn’s incredible passion and exuberance. What utterly amazes me is the fountain of creativity that Haydn exhibits at the end of his life. Here he is pushing three score and ten years (the equivalent of today’s ninety year old) and his innovation and youthfulness are everywhere breathtaking, not to speak of his humor! I am, actually, the same age as Haydn when he wrote his masterpiece and I can only hope and pray that a fraction of his imagination and a generous measure of his faith will be in me as we perform. I invite you to catch the live webcast, Friday, June 25 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, at www.medici.tv, and join in the experience.
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Every year there seems to be a musical highlight, a moment that I either look forward to with great anticipation or that catches me by surprise. This season, so far, it clearly was the SDG-sponsored filming of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis in Lisbon last week. Everything about this occasion was thrilling, from the soloists, chorus and orchestra (the Gulbenkian Foundation Choir and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe), to the filming and the response of the audience. I had done this monumentally difficult work with four previous ensembles, including the great Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, but none came close to this rendition. Part of the success stemmed simply from my deep immersion in the work over the past several months to the point of finally feeling ‘at home’ with it. But a greater part of the success came from a remarkable cohesion between all performers, especially the choir, which sang with a confidence and joyous commitment that blew us all away.
It was truly a privilege to be a part of such music making. We professionals that spend our lives making music day in and day out are blessed to do what we do. But it is not every day that we experience everything coming together in a kind of perfection. This was that day. I look forward to the DVD release later this year.
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