Taking us on an emotional journey: Solomon’s Knot in Bach’s 1725 version of the St John Passion at Wigmore Hall

St Nicholas Church, Leipzig Where Bach’s St John Passion first performed

Bach: St John Passion (1725); Solomon’s Knot; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 26 February 2025

Sung from memory with remarkable emotional directness, at times this was close to a concert staging and very much a powerful communal experience

We know frustratingly little about the details of Bach’s actual performance practice in Leipzig. For instance, when Bach revived the St John Passion in 1725, having first performed it in 1724, how many of the performers were the same? We can make assumptions, but we don’t know. This has relevance because for 1725, Bach made significant changes to the work, replacing the opening and closing choruses, adding and replacing arias. Given his musicians’ workload, you might have assumed he would want to rely on their remembering the music.

We also don’t know why he made the changes. The 1725 version, whilst not wildly different, has a couple of ‘new’ arias that make the reaction to Christ’s Passion journey seem rather angrier. And for a modern listener the start of the piece is disorientating as the new opening chorus eventually found a permanent home in the St Matthew Passion.

Easter seems to be starting early this year, and on Wednesday 26 February 2025, Solomon’s Knot gave us our first Passion of the year, Bach’s St John Passion in its 1725 version at Wigmore Hall. Whilst the hall’s acoustic is nothing like that of the churches in Bach’s Leipzig. The very full platform, with eight singers and 13 instrumentalists, must surely have echoed the organ loft in Bach’s performances. One quibble, an eternal one with Passion (and oratorio) performances in concert halls, we missed the characteristic depth sound of Bach’s organ and had to live with a chamber one.

The singers sat in an arc facing the audience, with the instrumentalists behind. Given that the singers were performing the work from memory, this meant that there was nothing between singer and audience, the performance was directly to us. Inevitably there was an element of concert staging, thought had been given about what the singers were actually to do. They created a sense of communal experience, during most of the recitative the other singers remained standing, turning to look at the Evangelist. This also had the wonderful advantage that this performance lacked the annoying popping up and down that usually happens. This was true of arias too, with sometimes a sense that the other singers were reluctant to sit down, to let things go.

This communal experience extended to the role of Evangelist which was shared between the two tenors, Thomas Herford and Ruari Bowen. I would happily have heard a complete work from either of them, both made compelling Evangelists. Herford perhaps the more thoughtful, considered of the two with Bowen more up front, giving us a more story-teller aspect. Both brought clarity to the words and if you know the German you were well set. There was a directness too, perhaps a lack of artifice, particularly with Herford’s performance, along with a sense that they were setting the scene and it was in the arias and choruses that the meat happened.

The tenor solos were sung by the singer who was Evangelist at the time, making them extensions of the narrative, the Evangelist’s personal response. At the end of Part One, Bowen gave a vividly vigorous and, at times, intense account of ‘Zerschmettert mich’ (Smash me, you rocks and hills) one of the new arias, and Herford brought real urgency to ‘Ach, windet euch nicht so’ (Ah, do not wind yourselves thus) in Part Two, throwing off the more virtuoso passages, and Bowen made the arioso ‘Mein Herz’, towards the end, into an intense extension of his earlier recitatives.

Frederick Long was Christus. Long was still using a score but his performance was highly communicative, and he made a sober Christus, bringing strength and defiance into his long scene with Johnny Sells’ Pilatus. In Part One, Long got one of the new arias, displaying remarkable anger in ‘Himmel reisse’ (Heaven, tear apart! Earth shake!) performing with a youthful energy. And in Part Two he sang the aria ‘Eilt, ihr angefochtnen Seelen’ (Hasten, ye harassed souls) in a vivid performance taken at quite a lick. Hastening indeed.

As the second bass soloist, Sells was something of the Lord High Everything Else, contributing strong accounts of Petrus and Pilatus, as well as taking over Double Bass duties when Jan Zahourek moved to viola da gamba. He also brought great thoughtfulness to ‘Mein teurer Heiland’ (My dear Saviour), forming a great quintet with the four singers of the chorale in a way that just does not happen when you have a large choir.

That viola da gamba solo was of course in ‘Es ist vollbracht’ (It is finished) which was sung by Kate Symonds-Joy with full tone and really serious intent, yet suddenly fast and vivid in the central section. Earlier in the work, Michal Czerniawski had contributed a lovely fluid account of ‘Von der Stricken’ (From the chains of my sins) with a terrific contribution from the wind players. 

Zoe Brookshaw brought bright tone and a sense of serious delight to ‘Ich folge dir’ with fabulous contributions from the two flautists, Eva Caballero and Marta Goncalves). The other soprano, Clare Lloyd-Griffiths finally got her moment in her plaintive account of ‘Zerfliesse, mein Herze’ (Melt, my heart), the work’s final aria.

In the choral sections, I very much enjoyed the balance with the vivid performance from the singers part of a whole rather than a chorus dominating. Throughout the instrumental performances brought character and feeling to the piece, many of the arias being about the interaction between singer and players rather than a single soloist. In particular, bassoonist Inga Maria Klaucke and oboists Rachel Chaplin and Robert de Bree did sterling work.

This was Bach’s St John Passion performed as a coherent whole rather than as a series of linked threads and you felt drawn into the performers’ collective emotional journal. At the end we had Jacobus Handl’s motet Ecce quomodo moritur justus which Bach included after each performance of his passions.

Solomon’s Knot

Soprano Zoë Brookshaw, Clare Lloyd-Griffiths
Alto Kate Symonds-Joy, Michał Czerniawski
Tenor Thomas Herford, Ruairi Bowen
Bass Jonathan Sells (artistic director), Frederick Long

Violin 1 Magdalena Loth-Hill (leader), Agata Daraškaitė
Violin 2 George Clifford, Gabi Jones
Viola Joanne Miller
Cello Sarah McMahon
Double Bass / Viola da Gamba Jan Zahourek

Flute Eva Caballero, Marta Gonçalves
Oboe Rachel Chaplin, Robert de Bree
Bassoon Inga Maria Klaucke
Harpsichord / Organ James Johnstone