想望

Was watching part of this drama again and this piece from the soundtrack is so captivating.

Here are some more pieces in the same vein:

Highlights and Notes:
This performance of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion is beautiful. The setting is a beautiful church with excellent acoustics, not too large nor too small.
Regarding the tempo of baroque music, one often finds interpretations which use a higher tempo. More and more it seems interpretations with slower tempos are becoming rare, but I feel that slowing the tempo down on a lot of pieces really opens the music up dramatically.
For the opening chorale “Kommt, ihr Töchter” I like the speedier tempo. It works well to bring out the drama of the work and prevents the chorale from becoming drained of passion and intensity and becoming muddled as it might be prone to do with a slower tempo.
However for many of the arias I would prefer the intensity that flows out of the articulation of pieces performed at a slower tempo, for example the “Mache dich mein Herze rein” near the end in my opinion really shines more when it’s played more slowly. The same can be said for “O Mensch bewein dein Sunde gross”.

Here are some highlights from this performance:
00:00 Opening choir “Kommt ihr Töchter”
26:50 “Ich will dir mein Herze schenken” – the moment when one of the choir boys in the background is mouthing the piece as soloist sings it is priceless
52:40 duet so … mein Jesus
59:35 O Mensch bewein dein Sunde gross
1:21:14 Erbarme dich – WAAYYY to fast IMHO but still beautiful
1:37:40 choir das …
1:39:10 soprano
1:40:10 aus liebe
1:47:20 aria alto … meiner nicht …
1:58:40 beautiful cello/viola da gamba duet w/ basso
2:05:18 choir w/ recativo
2:19:18 Mache dich mein Herze rein (beautiful title: “Maketh thee my heart pure”)
2:28:50 choir

This work is not as popular as the Mass in B Minor but there are many precious moments and the opening chorale is a harmonic masterwork.

Here is a version of Erbarme dich at a slower tempo. To me this brings out the passion in the piece a lot more: