Pro Coro sings St. John Passion

Of Johann Sebastian Bach’s two passion settings, it’s the St. Matthew Passion that has scooped the lion’s share of praise.

Some scholars view the St. John Passion as the more rough-hewn, less polished older sibling.

However Pro Coro conductor Michael Zaugg considers the St. John setting supremely important with no doubt in his mind as to its sheer beauty and power.

He also has a knack for putting the 2,000-year-old story in a contemporary context.

“It’s a monumental master work that at some point everyone should listen to. It’s about a young man who stood up for his convictions and was put to death. His parents and friends couldn’t do anything to help. For me, as a parent, it’s heartbreaking. It’s a very current story – standing up for your beliefs with the same outcome. It’s a human story and it’s important to sit down for two hours and think about it.”

Originally written for Good Friday in 1724, Zaugg has programmed St. John Passion for Pro Coro’s traditional Good Friday concert at the Winspear Centre on March 25.

The passion was the core of Bach’s year-long cycle of liturgical cantatas, and was reworked into four versions. Version three is the one performed most regularly.

As a Good Friday offering, it is viewed as a prayer, a meditation, a masterpiece that expertly balances the theatrical and devotional.

Modern day composers separate their religious and musical lives.

“Bach’s was not separate. He lived and breathed religion. He lived in a house next to the church. His study was across the church courtyard. Composing wasn’t necessarily his profession. It was his being,” said Zaugg.

The liturgical content sung in German bears an emotional intimacy and urgency that creates deeply compelling drama.

“Bach works with the text and lets words speak musically and he creates an atmosphere for the music. The music is very grand and intimate. It always goes back to the Evangelist who tells the story and then it moves back to full action. You become engaged in the different characters – soldiers, street people. That’s very powerful. Now if it was on the big screen it would be fast, furious and powerful.”

The choir’s 24 singers with additional four singers from the intern program will handle a complex succession of recitatives, arias and chorales.

Four St. Albert-connected singers perform at the concert – sopranos Gillian Brinston-Kurschat and Carol Kube as well as basses Michael Kurschat and David Fraser.