The Hamburg poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes wrote the Passion oratorio libretto Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus for Reinhard Keiser to set to music in 1712. Handel composed a setting in London about four years later (probably for Hamburg), and in April 1716 Telemann’s version was first performed in Frankfurt. The broody opening Sinfonia makes one think of Haydn’s late orchestral writing at its most daring. The Berlin AAM’s playing is lean and angular but the 35-strong RIAS Chamber Choir seems overpowering at times, and it would be good to hear this work performed by smaller and more integrated forces.

René Jacobs divides the soprano arias for the Daughter of Zion and the Faithful Soul between Birgitte Christensen and Lydia Teuscher (the booklet fails to indicate what singer performs which arias): “Was Bärentatzen, Löwenklauen” has snappy percussive horn fanfares, and several contrasting arias during the scene of Christ’s scourging are among the highest points of the oratorio. Marie-Claude Chappuis’s singing of Judas’s guilt-wracked scene, in which the betrayer resolves to commit suicide, is extraordinary. The trio “O Donnerwort!” crackles with theatrical velocity. Johannes Weisser is a grainy Jesus, but his declamatory singing in the volatile “Erwäg, ergrimmte Natterbrut” is impressive. Donát Havár does not have a mellifluous timbre but is a good communicator of Peter’s texts. Jacobs paces the oratorio as if it is a vivid religious opera: he omits six arias and two recitatives “for reasons of dramatic coherence” (a more cynical observer might wonder if fitting the work onto only two discs could have had something to do with it). There are moments of brittle intensity that could have afforded more gentleness, but Jacobs’s committed vision provides us with a valuable glimpse of Telemann’s brilliant imagination.