Album Notes

A PERSONAL REFLECTION...

Bach's St. Matthew Passion stands undisputed among the greatest artistic achievements of Western civilization. The variety and depth of Bach's musical inventiveness is staggering, and the spiritual insights the work offers transcend time, space, and creed. Though dauntingly vast in scope, its architecture is brilliantly concise. My relationship with the work is intensely personal, but hardly unique - virtually every musician I know reveres this piece with a sense of awe. It is that remarkable. It is that powerful.

I discovered this work during a survey course of Baroque music while I was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. To this day, I vividly remember sitting in a carrel in the Listening Library, overwhelmed as the magnificent opening chorus unfolded for the first time. Three hours later, when that last wrenching B-natural dissonance in the final measure resolved, I had been transformed and humbled.

Since that day some forty years ago,the Matthew Passion has been, in a very real way, my musical bible. I return to it in times of joy, sadness, hope, uncertainty, gratitude, and love. I have been inspired by Picander's poetry, by Luther's chorale texts, and by the Biblical scriptures that form the dramatic and spiritual basis of the work. I have sung it with some of the world's great conductors and have been inspired by teachers who patiently guided me towards their insights. The piece has served as a textbook for counterpoint, harmony, and musical structure. I have carried the score with me on trips, notably on a visit to the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where I spent one afternoon in solitude, listening silently to the music in the dark church in which it was first performed, and where the great composer lay in his final resting place just a few feet from my pew. Twenty years ago, I conducted the work for the first time; it was the most difficult thing I had ever attempted, and unequivocally the most rewarding. Though I have heard, studied, or performed Bach's great Passion literally thousands of times throughout my life, to this day it is still new, unfailingly nurturing, and ever miraculous.

There is an ancient Chinese proverb that counsels us that "The Journey is the Reward." The preparation of tonight's performance has taken forty years. How very grateful I am that Bach wrote this monumental work, that it survived the ages, and that I have had the opportunity to collaborate with so many wonderful musicians over the years, and especially tonight, in exploring the profound depths of this inspired masterpiece.

- Gerald Sousa
April 5th, 2009