Not a note of Bach’s St Mark Passion exists, but we know it existed once and that it was a parody work. Koopman makes no bones about the purely speculative nature of this project. He pretends he’s a Bach student: ‘Here is a libretto; set it to music using anything you find in the works I have written up to now (1731). What you do not find, compose yourself.’ And how he revels in the opportunity to draw on his vast knowledge of Bach’s choral music as he matches cantata choruses and quasi-turbae to Picander’s extant text of Bach’s lost Passion. This has been done before, most recently by Andor Gomme and Simon Heighes but using, as the accepted basis of the contemplative texts, the contemporaneous Trauer Ode (BWV196) as well as recitatives and choruses from Keiser’s St Mark Passion. Koopman feels this is not a satisfying parody, and similarly refuses to raid equivalent music from the St John Passion (although he uses ‘Zerschmettert mich’ from the second version of 1725). In fact, the St Mark, as Bach would have recognised, was a different type of proposition to the St John or St Matthew Passions and he would have made no attempt to model it on his two previous settings; the libretto here draws more on the austerity of the narrative than the luxuriance of the commentary. Hence, there are fewer arias, fewer moments of poetic reflection and a more concentrated gospel narrative.
Koopman’s deft sense of the appropriate idiom is reflected in his choice of the opening chorus, taken from BWV25, luminously sung with its well-disguised Passion chorale (stripped of its original four-part brass and wind choir and replaced by a boy’s choir) intensifying the harmonic direction. The arias witness seasoned Bachians in full flow. Paul Agnew conveys ‘Falsche Welt’ as a graphic declamation, confirming a brilliantly effective transformation taken from BWV179, ‘Hypocrites who thus ignore’ becoming ‘treacherous world, thy flattering kisses are but poison’. This has a more Passion-like bearing than the music from BWV54 used in Gomme and Heighes’s reworking.
As for the recitatives, Koopman ‘knows what he is talking about’, to quote him, and I wouldn’t disagree. His construction of the recitatives is not entirely unlike the striking Mozartian pastiches of Robert Levin, though there is a tendency for formulas to lead to an imbalance of concentration on a particular pivotal chord; it therefore just misses being idiomatic. It isn’t Bach, and how reassuring that is! Yet Koopman’s more self-conscious recitatives – and they are few and far between – make for a slightly restless start and not the organic unfolding of Bach’s extant Passions, though this is partly caused by injudicious spacing between tracks.
As for the delivery, Christoph Pregardien reveals his best ringing expressivity. This is a voice in fine fettle at present. The cast is indeed strong when you’ve got two basses such as the poised Klaus Mertens and the authoritative Christus of Peter Kooy. The chorus and orchestra are uniformly fine throughout.
Koopman’s version of the St Mark – which shuns some of the most historically likely parody movements used by Bach – is inclined to make the piece a rather more sophisticated compilation than it probably was. But as there is no evidence, Koopman is ever the idealist and gives us something of real musical substance, in certain respects more a spiritual parody of the St John and St Matthew. Apart from being the most satisfying account to date, it is a performance which best serves the mystery of the Passion, differently told, as a wonderful narrative for musico-poetic dramatic contours.
One gripe: I wish Koopman would have listed the cantata sources. I happened to know most of the parodies (his manipulations of BWV4, 24 and 179 are most effective as turbae), but 20 minutes spent going through each thematic incipit in Schmieder’s catalogue should not be necessary.'