St. Matthew Passion Music

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 35, 13 March 1931, Page 6

St. Matthew Passion Music

Broadcast from 2YA N the evening of Sunday, March 22, Passion Sunday, music-lovers will be afforded the opportunity of hear-/ ing what is accounted the most beautiful Lenten music ever. written. . (his is "The Passion according to St. Matthew," set to music by John Sebastian Bach. A selection from this work will be broadcast from St. Paul’s Pro-Cathedral. -Mr. Robert Parker, C.M.G., whose work for music in New Zealand for many years past needs no comment here, is the organist and choirmaster; Miss Ava Symons and Mrs. Furner Steers will play the violin and piano parts respectively, and the soloists will be Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. Wilfred Andrews, Mr. Chas. Williams and Mr. Binet Brown. The St. Matthew Passion Music was first sung at the Church of St. Thomas, Leipzig, on Good Friday, 1729, and was revived by Mendelssohn in Berlin in 1829, exactly 100 years after its first performance. In BWngland it was first given by the Bach Society under

Sterndaie Bennett in 1854. Bennett’s productions of the work were conspicuous for ‘the excellence with which he brought out the loving piety of the work; later "conductors have laid more stress on its dramatic character. Performances of the St. Matthew Passion Musie were given by Sir Joseph Barnby in Hxeter Hall, Westminster Abbey, and the Royal Albert Hall, and it is..performed annually at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, in Holy Week.