Handel: Brockes Passion

Rarely heard Handel work

     

This 1967 recording of Handel's "Brockes Passion" does a lot of things outside of today's standards of authentic instruments orthodoxy, but the passion and committment in the performance is so compelling that the result is still worth hearing. August Wenzinger was one of the pioneers of what would eventually become the period-conscious music making of today's leading lights such as Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Pinnock, Norrington, etc.. In this recording, which clocks in at some three hours long, we hear a work that was written by Handel in about 1716, and which is in fact his only essay in the genre of the German Passion (since the "St. John's Passion" once credited to him is now considered a false attribution).

There is much distinguished singing here, especially from Theo Adam as Jesus, Ernst Haefliger as the Evangelist, and Maria Stader as the Daughter of Zion. Even though there is a newer recording of "Brockes" on the Carus label conducted by Peter Neumann (also available from iTunes at this writing; I have not yet heard it), this older one remains worthy and satisfying.

(There are, by the way, some changes to the sung text in the Wenzinger recording, although these from what I can tell do not impact the music in any way; B.H. Brockes' verse is open to objection on several grounds, and those who prepared this 1967 performance apparently thought some rewording was in order. I say this in case anyone references the old Handel-Gesellschaft score of this Passion against the recording and notices the differences between the text there and the text as sung here.)