Ireland Sir James MacMillan’s St John Passion: Seán Boylan (Christus), National Symphony Chorus (choral director: David Young), Chamber Choir Ireland, National Symphony Orchestra / David Hill (conductor). National Concert Hall, Dublin, 18.4.2025. (RB)
The National Concert Hall in Dublin has a long-standing tradition of performing a Passion on Good Friday. This year they have turned to James MacMillan whose Catholic beliefs have long influenced his work. MacMillan’s St John’s Passion was composed in 2007 and was dedicated to Sir Colin Davis, in honour of his 80th birthday. A live recording of the work’s premiere, conducted by Davis, was issued on the LSO Live label (review here).
This work is indebted in many ways to the seminal Passion settings of J S Bach, but it tries to find a new twenty-first century musical language to illuminate the Passion story. There is only one soloist in the work, a baritone who takes on the role of Christ. The narrator’s role (allocated to a tenor in Bach’s Passions) is given to a small chorus. The rest of the text is sung by the full choir including the roles of Peter, Pilate and the crowd. With regard to the orchestra, MacMillan aimed for a sparse and lean texture while maintaining the potential for full dramatic climaxes.
The work is divided into ten movements. In the first seven, a section of the Biblical narrative is followed by a Latin liturgical text reflecting and commenting on the crucifixion story. The eighth movement sets part of the Good Friday Liturgy known as the Reproaches as a dialogue between the baritone and large chorus. In the ninth movement the order is inverted with the Latin liturgical text preceding the Biblical narrative. The final movement is purely instrumental and is described by MacMillan as a song without words.
The character of Christ in this Passion story is a much more human, red-blooded and, indeed, angry figure than the passive spiritual Christ in the Bach Passions. Irish baritone, Seán Boylan, sang with power and authority, projecting well into the auditorium. His tone was rich and sonorous, and his diction was excellent. He skilfully negotiated MacMillan’s melismatic lines and injected dramatic momentum into the Reproaches. He has a very strong, brilliant top although he is a little less assured at the bottom of the vocal register.
The National Symphony Chorus (NSC) and the Chamber Choir Ireland were both superb in their respective roles. The singers produced a beautifully blended sound and the diction was excellent. Both choruses brought the Passion story to life in a vivid and compelling way and the NSC did an excellent job depicting the key characters in the story. Some of the most inspired singing was in the rendition of the Latin liturgical sections of the work. For example, there was some highly charged dramatic singing from the NSC at the end of the third movement when they pondered the role of Judas, and luminous lyricism in the Stabat Mater at the end of the lyrical seventh movement.
David Hill did an excellent job directing the assembled forces. He seemed determined to bring out the full dramatic potential of the work and some of the orchestral entries were very powerful, particularly from the brass. Having said that, the balance of sound was not quite right on one or two occasions with the orchestra drowning out the choir. The final movement for orchestra alone was particularly beautiful with the strings meshing to create an elegiac song without words which built in intensity and then subsided into the depths of the orchestra.
This was the first time I had heard MacMillan’s St John Passion, and I had mixed feelings about the work. Some of the Latin liturgical sequences were inspired, as was the lyrical seventh movement and the orchestral final movement. The choral writing was clearly influenced by plainchant and the writing was assured although some of it was repetitive and not particularly inventive. For me, the key weakness in this piece was in the orchestral accompaniment which at times sounded like overly bombastic film music. Quite a few movements opened with very noisy outbursts from the orchestra with the brass prominent and I am not sure they added much to the dramatic narrative.
Overall, this was a first-rate performance from the assembled choral and orchestral forces. Seán Boylan made the role of Christus his own and he is clearly a name to watch out for in future.
Robert Beattie