This Easter just gone, like every Easter, was a time for Passion: Passiontide, and the re-enactment of the well-trod path to Calvary, through the musical stations of Johann Sebastian Bach. The composer told the same story in at least two very different ways—there are other versions that haven’t survived the centuries—with his St John Passion and St Matthew Passion.
Bach stands at the head of what we understand by classical music. He is the supreme master of music as abstract design, keyboard music of the most intellectual ingenuity and visceral impact. At the same time, Bach’s vocal music can probe the deepest wounds of human existence and express the fiercest joys. The elision of the pain of the Passion with the almost erotic quality of the music’s engagement with it gives Bach’s Passions their extraordinary intensity, nowhere more than in the two searing arias from the John and the Matthew for soprano, flute and oboe, “Zerfliesse” and “Aus Liebe”. They throb with a sweet pain that generates not only a musical but also a physical sensation.