FULL St John Passion (Handel?/Böhm) Szeged 2021
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: St John Passion
- Composer: Georg Böhm, Handel George Frideric aka Händel Georg Friedrich
- Libretto: anonymous
- Venue & Opera Company: Votive Church of Szeged, Hungary
- Recorded: May 28, 2021
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Eszter Gyüdi, Zsuzsanna Szabó, József Csapó, Márton Komáromi, Szilveszter Szélpál, Lőrinc Kósa
- Conductor: Sándor Gyüdi
- Orchestra: Szeged Symphonic Orchestra
- Chorus: Viktor Vaszy Choir
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Filharmónia Magyarország
- Date Published: 2021
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Quote Gramophone:
For a long time, this setting of the St John Passion was taken to be a work of Handel’s youth—written, it was supposed, in Hamburg in 1704. In the late 1960s, however, a German scholar stated that it was not Handel’s work, but probably by Georg Bohm (1661–1733), a Thuringian-born composer who worked in Hamburg and Luneburg and is remembered chiefly for some fine organ music and for his influence on the young Bach. The attribution to him makes good sense, much better sense than an attribution to Handel, for there is scarcely even a glimmer here of anything we would recognize as Handelian (even making due allowance for the fact that this is supposed to be a very early work). It is a fairly slender piece, consisting mainly of short numbers in a direct, simple, rather conservative late-baroque style. As in more familiar Passion settings, there is a tenor Evangelist, a crowd chorus with some lively if brief contrapuntal numbers, and contemplative pieces including several arias, three duets and some choruses, of which the concluding one (”Schlafe wohl”) is genuinely moving. Other notable items include Jesus’s death scene (”Es ist vollbracht!”) in a free arioso style but I have also to say that there are several vapid ones and some that are rather clumsily written.