Conductor of Bach Shares Composer’s Passion

Musical Passions--settings of the Gospel accounts of the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ--seem unlikely vehicles for popular success in a secular, post-modern age. After all, this venerable genre, which began in the 10th century, has survived outside liturgical use almost exclusively on the strength of just two works, the “St. Matthew Passion” and the “St. John Passion” by J. S. Bach.

Yet probably the biggest musical event of 2000, celebrating both the millennium and the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, was the premiere of four new Passions in Stuttgart last September. Crowds packed the halls, not only for the concerts, but also for discussion sessions the night before. The Times’ music critic Mark Swed called the Passions “stirring, major works . . . each a major success.” The performances were televised--and rebroadcast in Germany these past two weeks--and recordings of the works are starting to come out.

The man behind it all is Helmuth Rilling, head of Stuttgart’s International Bach Academy and one of the leading Bach conductors for almost half a century. Tonight and tomorrow, Rilling leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic and assembled forces in Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” and he is not surprised by the durability of this massive devotional work.

“First of all, in a general way, there is the quality of Bach’s music, and this is his largest work in length and forces,” Rilling says. “The story is told in three layers. First there is the Gospel text, set as recitatives. Then there are free poetic comments in the arias, and the third layer is the chorales, which are the observers’ response. These are interwoven, not just as drama, but always with Bach thinking, ‘What does it mean?’

“It is always so overwhelming to people today, regardless of religious belief, because it faces so many basic human problems. Love, hate, betrayal, suicide; these are still problems, and Bach makes his idea very clear, that for these problems there cannot be only human solutions. We have to look another way, and the audience still feels and is struck by those problems and the search for answers.”

The idea for the new contributions to the Passion repertory came about five years ago, as Rilling was considering plans for the major Bach anniversary in 2000. Part of the commemoration would be retrospective--Rilling directed the Bach Academy’s edition of the composer’s complete works, 172 CDs issued by Hanssler Classics.

But that was not enough, Rilling says. The second step was to find new ways of looking at Bach and his music.

“I asked, ‘What would be the reaction to Bach’s music for our time, for composers to honor Bach by composing a new piece?’ The idea was that the composers should come from different backgrounds and write a Passion not just on the traditional elements, but also thinking about the suffering of mankind. Another meaning of ‘Passion’ that they considered was the involvement of strong feelings and emotion.”

On these terms Rilling’s project succeeded admirably. Recordings of all four new Passions will be issued by Hanssler this year, with the first, Wolfgang Rihm’s “Deus Passus” (based on St. Luke), just out. Rihm basically followed the Bach tradition, says Rilling, who conducted it again for the spring festival in Lucerne just before coming here. Rihm makes connections to the suffering of the Holocaust, mingling texts by Paul Celan with Latin liturgy and Luke’s narrative.

Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina combined St. John’s Passion text with his book of Revelation, setting it not as drama, but in a mystical and liturgical way, influenced by her strong Russian Orthodox beliefs and experience, Rilling says. The idea of water in different forms was central to the setting of St. Matthew’s Passion by Tan Dun, the Chinese American composer who won an Oscar for his “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” score.

A Striking Passion

Both Festive and Solemn

Most immediately striking was the “Passion According to St. Mark” by Osvaldo Golijov, an Argentine of Eastern European Jewish heritage probably best known up until now as the skilled and imaginative arranger of many cross-cultural forays by the Kronos Quartet.

“Was Madonna in the house, or perhaps Michael Jackson?” asked one Stuttgart paper rhetorically, after 20 minutes of delirious applause hailed the premiere. Now living in Boston, where his Passion scored another triumph in February, Golijov will be much with us this year, in residence at the Ojai Festival this summer and then with the Philharmonic in November.

Based on Hispanic traditions of Passion processions and South American dance rhythms, Golijov’s Passion requires something like the Buena Vista Social Club along with European-style oratorio forces. Rowdy in its evocation of street festivals, the work reminds us that Bach’s music was firmly rooted in contemporary song and dance. It also has its contemplative moments, Rilling says, ending quietly with a kaddish for the crucified Jesus.

“Along the way I had to wonder if everything would be done on time, if the audience would listen to these new pieces,” Rilling says. “It was surprising that at the end, everything worked very well.”

All of this rather explodes the notion of a Bach specialist focused solely on the Baroque period, but then Rilling has always been a musician of wide-ranging interests. This summer the Oregon Bach Festival, where Rilling is also director, pays tribute to the Verdi centennial. Rilling became acquainted with Golijov in 1995, when he commissioned and premiered “Oceana,” a cantata by Golijov that uses texts by Pablo Neruda.

In 1995 Rilling also prefigured his determinedly disparate Passion commissions by asking composers representing the 14 countries most directly involved in World War II to contribute to a communal Requiem for the 50th anniversary of the end of that war. The composers included John Harbison, Luciano Berio, Judith Weir and Gyorgy Kurtag, and the resulting piece won the Theodore Heuss Prize from UNESCO, honoring Rilling for his commitment to using music to further peace and reconciliation.

As a Bach interpreter, Rilling has found something of a middle way between the heavy symphonic Bach of the first half of the 20th century and the rediscoveries of the period instrument movement. He has worked often with most of his soloists here--Anthony Rolfe-Johnson as the Evangelist and Matthias Goerne as Jesus, with Christiane Oelze, Ingeborg Danz, Stanford Olsen and Christian Gerhaher contributing the arias--and is happy to be reunited with the USC Thornton Choral Artists, the chorus for the Haydn “Creation” he did here last season with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. The Paulist Choristers will supply the boy choir.

With its double orchestra and double chorus, and large solo forces, including many instrumental obbligatos, the “St. Matthew Passion” is inherently attractive visually as well as musically. Though certainly not intended by Bach, the drama, with its multiple levels, has been made more overt in many modern stagings of the work, even including ballets. Jonathan Miller’s 1993 production, for example, had its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1997 and was revived there in four performances this week.

“That is another way of interpreting the music,” Rilling acknowledges, “but the music does not need it. Personally, I find it less distracting to just listen. Bach is one of the greatest composers in music history, who brought together so many styles in his own work and influenced everyone who came after him.”

* Helmuth Rilling conducts Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” tonight and Saturday, 7 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. $10 to $70. (213) 365-3500.