WARE – Desolate grass roads lined with trees lace the landscape around the Quabbin Reservoir, the source of most of Boston's water, the site of a ghost town and one of the longest earthen dams in the U.S.
What is now the largest inland body of water in Massachusetts, the Quabbin is also artificial, created by flooding an area that once held four small towns, Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott in the Swift River Valley. It amounted to a massive state-authorized land-taking to serve Boston's growing needs.
Authenticity is an elusive accomplishment when performing that most profound of musical scores, Bach's St. John Passion. Artists must interpret the text in a way that is moving but not maudlin and hopeful without being saccharine. On Friday night, the Handel & Haydn Society succeeded admirably at the task. Harry Christophers' perspicacious conducting elicited the type of superior performance one hopes to hear with Bach's mighty work.
Bach wrote the St. John Passion oratorio during his first year as the church music director of Leipzig, Germany. The première was on April 7, 1724 at St. Nicholas Church for the Good Friday Vespers. The score alternates between recitatives, which tell the Passion story, and arias and chorales that either assume character roles or provide stirring reflections on the text.
