When Rene Jacobs says that he has recorded the familiar, "beloved" final version of a piece, as he has with his new recording of Bach's St. John Passion (Harmonia Mundi), it gets your attention. It's been his practice more often than not to upset the apple cart, and after, many of his historically informed counterparts would say, overloading it with apples of an immodest array of varieties. Back when I was getting my indoctrination in "authentic" early-music practice, he was seen as the fox in the original-wood henhouse, and for many of his decisions about how to "fill out" scores their composers would only have sketched, assuming that performers would complete them according to circumstances of performance, he was greeted as a vandal.
That he has loved being a provocateur has never been in doubt, any more than that some of his versions of things have either constituted re-composition or were just way over the top. As a showman, he's never been dull, if frequently maddening. But to subtract his enormous contribution to the enterprise over two generations would be the real vandalism. He's an interventionist, big time; this is not news. If you take your Bach, or the music of any other composer, neat, there are plenty of other barstools to sit on and pontificate, or gnash your teeth.
From mine, it seems, strikingly like the repertoire and ever-broadening range of performance practices in which he works, that Jacobs is aging well. Periodically he'll let rip with something like his uproarious recreation of Emilio de Cavlieri's Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo from 1600, just before opera and oratorio emerged distinct forms. His 2015 Harmonia Mundi recording of it has to be heard to be believed; sometimes you swear you're hearing kazoos. But the likelihood of my taking his recordings over a competitor's today is high, recently reinforced by his Mozart opera Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail , which just walked away from out conductor Yannick Nezet-Segiun's ironically "straighter" version with a starrier cast.
Jacobs' St. Matthew Passion of 2013 was revelatory, period. Like the work itself, his new St. John Passion is less ambitious in creating the actual acoustic of the piece, the sound in space the way a listener would hear the piece in real church context. But it's every bit as fine and, in its comparatively unflashy way, as convincing, almost devastating. It's precisely in its most open opportunity to go for devastation �" Bach's evocation of the roiling earth at the moment of Jesus' death �" that you're not dashing off to review your earthquake insurance. This is uncommonly elevated stuff, Bach's depiction of and response to the crucifixion and burial as recorded in John, and it's precisely in Jacobs' restraint that the eloquence comes. There's detail galore in the performance, but never more than you can process, and none of which, once heard, you'd forego.
Jacobs gets clobbered most for his augmentation of the continuo instruments (cellos, viols, harpsichords-fortepianos-organs, lutes, etc.) that "accompany" the smaller vocal forms such as recitatives and arias, and the average church nave would have Jacobs' continuo section here sitting on top of one another. But everywhere in music now, accompaniment isn't what it used to be, and its executants are asked to be greater participants, to easily audible gains. Jacobs' selection of instruments to be deployed for each number varies according to expressive needs. The first time this superbly played St. John stabbed me was when a pungent assortment of them produced some almost bizarrely sinister sounds under Jesus' challenge under interrogation, "If I have spoken evil [uebel ], say where."
Most of the performers, including the Akademie fuer alte Musik Berlin and the equally superb RIAS Kammerchor, are from Jacobs' regular stable of collaborators, and the sense of deep ensemble shows everywhere. It's hard to imagine the other vocal soloists who would assent to the merciless demands Jacobs makes of them. The alto aria "Es ist vollbracht," sung immediately after Jesus sings the same words ("It is finished"), is as agonizingly slow as I've heard it. Countertenor Benno Schachtner not only manages it but also sings with rhythmic freedom and a palpable ache. Soprano Summae Im seems taxed to the limit in her first aria, then responds in Part II with a "Zerfliesse, mein Herze" in which she does some vocal sobbing while engaging with the instrumentalists as if they were among the mourning disciples. Werner Guera lets just enough of the dauntingly high lines of the Evangelist "show," that is, communicate the strain in the text.
The role of Jesus is relatively small, but Jacobs gives it to one of his real discoveries, baritone Johannes Weisser, and gives him the baritone arias to boot. We haven't heard vocal honesty like this since the early days of Cecilia Bartoli. Weisser is as penetrating as the spear that drains Jesus' side. The aria with chorus "Mein teuer Heiland"/"Jesu der du warest tot," immediately after Jesus gives up the ghost, is both at the limits of what's endurable and ineffably consoling. That's authentic Bach.