Bach Musica at St Matthew-in-the-City

Bach Musica began this season with a curiosity, the New Zealand premiere of a work written three centuries ago.

There are still those who doubt that the young Handel did in fact write this St John Passion, but the programme note by conductor Rita Paczian asked us to let the music, in which dramatic coups by far outnumber immature touches, speak for itself.

This is an austere score when placed alongside the better-known Passions of Bach. Handel wastes neither words nor notes. This simplicity was an occasional liability in arias like Redest du nicht bir mir. Shelagh Molyneux turned her vocal line beautifully but a plodding continuo from organ and cello weighed heavily on the proceedings. How much more fortunate was tenor John Murray, much of whose Evangelist's narrative was buoyed by Paczian's zesty harpsichord accompaniment.

Murray, a relative newcomer to our concert scene, was a veritable anchor for the whole performance, mainly in his long recitatives, as well as maintaining admirable form in pithy dialogue with Molyneux's Pilate and Graham O'Brien's thoughtful Christus.

Lisette Wesseling is at her best when called upon to deliver pure, spot-on vocal lines, as she did in Bach Musica's Monteverdi concert last year. Few sopranos in this country could dispense roulades of notes with the grace and effortlessness she epitomised on Sunday in her aria Durch dein Gefangnis. Less happy was her handling of Handel's violent shifts of registers and she must have received little inspiration from the sometimes tentative violin obbligato. Far more could have been made dramatically of the later Bebt, ihr Berge in which Jesus' breaking heart is compared to cracking mountains, melting rocks and thunder-darkened skies. Malcolm Ede made little of his Erchuttere mit Krachen, a Handelian vision of Hell's gate, which could have erred more on the side of scenery-chewing than caution.

The Bach Musica choristers emphatically didn't hold back. Their first cries for crucifixion would have put the fear of God into the most recalcitrant sinner and orchestral support was never less than solid. It all augurs tantalisingly for Bach Musica's Russian programme later in the year.