Interview, David Temple on recording Bach in English

As my colleague Katherine mentioned in her recent round-up of this year's Lenten and Easter releases, one of our most frequent customer-requests is for recordings of the Bach Passions in English - often as a homework-tool for singers preparing for one of the regular choral society performances of the works in translation, but sometimes from listeners who simply prefer to hear these most visceral of narratives in their own language. When we heard that Chandos would be issuing a new English-language recording of the John with the Crouch End Festival Chorus under the direction of David Temple, we breathed a collective sigh of gratitude to them for filling a gap in the market - then quickly realised that the commitment and power of the performance elevates this newcomer far beyond the status of 'useful experiment'!

I spoke to David last week about the challenges and advantages of performing and recording Bach in the vernacular, and how this new recording fits into current debates about historically-informed performance.

You’re clearly not going for a strictly ‘authentic’ performance here, at least not in the sense of re-creating Bach’s own small-forces approach. You mention in your notes, though, the large-scale revival-performances of the 1870s and beyond. Were you intentionally trying to recapture the spirit of one of these “choral society” interpretations?

The intention of this recording is to look forward and not back. Though no-one has officially said it, there has been a feeling for a while that large amateur choirs should not trespass on this territory. It is interesting to debate what is authentic. For Bach, ‘authentic’ would be to perform this work in the language of the audience – and so, by performing the Passion in English, we are being ‘authentic’ to the English-speaking world. Though we are a large number on the recording (exactly 100 singers), the speeds, clarity and articulation are very different from early/mid-twentieth-century performances. My intention is to give the listener an impression that the choir is chamber-like in terms of flexibility and detail BUT large and powerful in areas of the work where the baying crowd wants blood.

The biggest difference between this recording and the majority of those that have appeared in the last forty years is of course the use of English. Do you think the use of the listener’s own language is a requirement for understanding, and fully appreciating, Bach’s versions of the Passion narrative?

I most certainly do. We want to make this music accessible to a new audience. However sophisticated technology has become with subtitles, surtitles etc., there is nothing to compare with the directness of the words from the mouth to the ear. Many of my singers were shocked at the brutality of the story and often what happens is that the impact is diluted when the listener doesn’t understand the German language as it is heard.

On the other side of the coin – do you think the music suffers from having the words translated, with the unavoidable need to tweak rhythm and emphasis here and there (one thinks of the conundrum of finding a two-syllable synonym for “where” to replace “wohin” in both the Matthew and John Passions…)?

In terms of the setting of the words, of course Bach’s German is best but Neil Jenkins’s translation is a work of art. He tries – with great success – to use English words which have similar sounds, similar attack and impact as the German. Occasionally the stress of the word needs adapting and I consider that part of my job as conductor to maximise the sense of the English in the way the singers phrase their lines. In Neil’s translation ‘Wohin’ has become ‘Oh where’ and ‘Herr!’ has become ‘Hail’. There are a very few moments where the English doesn’t work as well as the German, but this is more than made up for by the drama in the vernacular.

Several translations the Passion have existed, some using what today might seem archaic language, and some more modern. There are, perhaps, arguments in favour of both those angles; how did you decide which translation to go for in the end?

Neil Jenkins’s edition sounds so natural. This makes it easy for the soloists and chorus to make his words their own. The main recitative singers on the CD (Robert Murray – Evangelist, Ashley Riches – Jesus and Andrew Ashwin – Pilate) communicate the words brilliantly. It almost feels like a play rather than musical work. What is also astonishing is that each time you listen, you get more and more out their dramatic interpretation. This is not a CD to listen to just once and then put it on the shelf.

Will you be giving the St Matthew Passion the same “Crouch End treatment” in the future?

Given the initial reaction to our new recording, with a review to die for in Gramophone, it is the obvious next step. The St Matthew Passion is on a different scale of size of forces and sheer length. Of course we would relish the challenge and I would love to reassemble the same dream-team – not least the wonderful Crouch End Festival Chorus.

David Temple's new recording of the St John Passion was released on 31st March on Chandos Records.