As Jerrold Northrop Moore puts it in his note, 'This performance of the St Matthew Passion is a 20th-century equivalent of Mendelssohn's famous Berlin performance in 1829. 'From 1931 onwards Vaughan Williams built up a very distinctive tradition of conducting the St Matthew Passion at the Leith Hill Musical Festival. It became so popular an event each Easter that in 1958 two performances were scheduled, the first with Sir Thomas Armstrong conducting, the second, as ever, with Vaughan Williams. As a present to the 85-year-old composer-conductor, a recording was made of his performance on March 5, and that is what Pearl has now issued commercially for the first time on this two-disc set.
The historic importance of the recording, as well as its sentimental value, is all the greater when one remembers that within six months Vaughan Williams was dead. This was his swan-song as an interpreter, and very moving it is, too. It has often been noted that as a conductor he was far from being a good technician, his beat often being hard to decipher. What mattered was the fervour he inspired, with the performers magnetised by his own deep dedication, something that shines out here, above all in the choral singing.
This is, of course, a very personal view of Bach's masterpiece, and one which, even in 1958, belonged to a past generation. Not that RVW was ever swayed by fashion. Jerrold Northrop Moore, in his note (prepared with the help of Ursula Vaughan Williams), quotes the octogenarian composer in stout defence of making cuts in this work. He positively disapproved of the 'fashion nowadays to perform Bach's Passion in its entirety with a ''Bach'' luncheon party between the parts'. Not only that, he justifies his particular cuts - a dozen numbers including four arias - with characteristic boldness: 'We must admit that Homer occasionally nods, and that some of the arias are not up to Bach's high standard. It is, I believe, wrong to include these for the sake of a mechanical completeness. 'The arias in question are the alto's 'Buss und Reu' in Part 1 and in Part 2 the tenor's 'Geduld', as well as the bass's 'Gebt mir meinen Jesum' and 'Komm susses Kreuz'. How different our attitude is today.
One simply has to put oneself into the perspective of RVW's period, and that obviously applies, too, to the treatment of the chorales that are consistently weighty and very slow indeed, worlds away from what we now expect. Yet, in context, with the Leith Hill Choir singing incandescently, they movingly act as milestones in the story, and though the main continuo instrument is a piano, with recitative also taken slowly by today's standards, the narrative is gripping. Vaughan Williams was a man of his time, too, in insisting on using the English of the King James Bible as presented in the Elgar-Atkins edition, with modifications of vocal line as necessary.
Speeds elsewhere in choruses and arias are generally slow, too, though as a romantic interpreter Vaughan Williams also believed in heightening dramatic impact with flexible tempos, as in the first great chorus (with the trebles soaring brilliantly above the ensemble in the chorale) and in the two tenor arias with chorus. Moore rightly singles out a supremely dramatic moment, when, on the cry from the chorus of 'Barabbas', followed by 'Let him be crucified' (disc 2 track 10, 1' 20'') Vaughan Williams gets the choir to make 'a rough-edged noise', returning to smooth, mellifluous tone for the number following, 'O wondrous love'. Smooth, moulded phrasing, Vaughan Williams felt, helped forward movement, again reflecting his period. And though the great final chorus flows well, the very end brings a massive rallentando plus a diminuendo down to a reverential pianissimo.
The recording, engineered by Christopher Finzi and Noel Taylor, is far finer than I had expected, generally well balanced with plenty of detail, so that the words are very clear. The big reservation is that though the choral sound is fresh and bright, there is little bloom on any of the soloists' voices - no doubt reflecting the acoustic of the Dorking Halls. It means that the soloists are hardly heard at their best, even Nancy Evans in 'Have mercy Lord' (Erbarme dich), or the fine, heady tenor, Wilfred Brown. Sadly, the recording underlines above all how the years had taken their toll on the voice of Eric Greene, veteran Evangelist from the '30s onwards. Yet for all the strain and lack of sweetness, the artistry and dedication behind each singer's performance are never in doubt. A great historic experience caught on the wing.
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