The St Matthew Passion, March 2013

On Tuesday March 26 the Vaughan's School Choir performed JS Bach's St Matthew Passion. The choir was joined by Nicholas Mulroy as Evangalist and Nicholas Warden as Christ. All other roles and arias were sung by members of the choir.

The St Matthew Passion is one of the great monuments of Western art and it was an enormous challenge to tackle it with the School Choir, one that dominated the whole of the Lent Term.  But the pupils rose to it magnificently, gripped by the drama of the music and aware, surely, of the greatness of the music that they were engaged with. At the concert we were very pleased to be joined by 25 young singers from Larmenier and Sacred Heart Primary School who sang the ripieno line in the opening chorus.

Performing the St Matthew means that the Vaughan has now sung the three great choral masterpieces of JS Bach in recent years, the other two being the St John Passion and the B Minor Mass. This performance of the St Mathew Passion was perhaps especially memorable in that the soloists were pupils, no fewer than 13 in total, all of whom sang with great repose and confidence. 

I hope soon to be able to post on the blog audio highlights from the concert but in the meantime here are the final two minutes of the evening, part of the closing chorus, We Bow our Heads.

Here are some photos from the evening, taken by Weenson Oo.