Music’s soul pours forth in Passions

Bach’s “St. John Passion” and “St. Matthew Passion” penetrate so deeply into the human psyche, into the source of pain and suffering and our urgent need for redemption, that these two musical depictions of Christ’s last days have come to symbolize the soul of music. The more reflective of the two works, “Matthew” is often called the most profound piece of music ever written, held in the same awe as “The Last Supper,” “Hamlet” and the handful of other greatest works in the Western canon.

As host to both passions, “John” on Friday and “Matthew” on Saturday, UCLA did what great universities are expected to in time of war, explore what it means to live and die. The timing was, of course, coincident, the Bach Collegium Japan having chosen more than a year ago to begin its first American tour in Royce Hall. But when music making comes as beautiful, as searching, as enthralling as were these two performances led by Masaaki Suzuki, nothing is a coincidence. The issues raised are essential, ever-present ones.

When formed in 1990, Bach Collegium Japan raised a few eyebrows. Does it make any more cultural sense for Japanese performers to master period instruments and singers to mimic what we know of historical practices than it does for Americans to form ensembles of gagaku, traditional Japanese court music? In fact, it does. The early music movement of the past quarter century has been driven in great part by recording, and Japan happens to be a classical-record paradise. Indeed, the sound of historically informed Bach is surely less exotic in Tokyo than in Texas.

Still, music is not colorblind; it invariably means more when performers bring unique aspects of their own culture to its making. A first impression of Bach Collegium Japan is admiration for the exceptional degree of devotion these inspired Japanese players and singers bring to their tasks. I have never heard period instruments played with such purity of tone, so reliably in tune. The small, precise, dramatically alert chorus breathed fire but also revealed a heartbreaking tenderness.

Suzuki is a striking figure. With his long, fleecy white hair, his scholar’s beard and spectacles, he could be a Japanese Faust, a mystical sage who stepped out of an earlier century. His conducting style is flowing and elegant, graceful hands exquisitely tracing Bach’s melodic lines. But he also conveys a pressing sense of drama and immediacy. In the two-hour “John” and three-hour “Matthew,” one musical event led inexorably to the next, creating the impression of fathomless ritual as well as living theater.

But there was something more that made these performances mean as much as they did at a moment in history when cultures and religions violently clash. It was the choice of one culture to seek universal meaning and far-reaching compassion in another, distant one. To point out but one of the many fine players, Hiroshi Fukuzawa brought an ethereal sweetness and sublime suppleness to his viola da gamba solo accompanying a bass aria near the end of “Matthew,” sending Jesus to heaven on the closest thing to the sound of gossamer wings that a mortal could be expected to produce. It is hard to point out exactly why, but I think it needed a foreign player, someone outside the tradition, to release the hold of gravity.

The soloists -- German, Dutch, Japanese, British -- were a more mixed bag. Gerd Turk was the riveting Evangelist in both Passions. The basses Jochen Kupfer and Peter Kooij brought two different styles, the former warmly booming, the latter more incisive. A countertenor, Robin Blaze, sang the alto solos with penetrating expression. Yukari Nonoshita’s tight, strong soprano was perhaps less poetic or secure but still commanding.

This week, Bach Collegium Japan travels across the U.S. with performances of the “St. Matthew Passion.” To its great credit, UCLA was the only presenter to book both Passions. But then the university pretty much ignored these miraculous musicians. The university community -- its professors and students -- were in embarrassingly short supply; the theater looked half empty both nights. Meanwhile, the university, displaying a bit less attention to detail than its Japanese guests, failed to provide texts for the audience to follow.