Building a Library
March 2002
First Choice

Winner - Baroque Vocal
Gramophone Awards
2001

Best Choral Performance
Grammy Awards
44th Awards (2001)

Christoph Prégardien, Matthias Goerne, Christine Schäfer, Dorothea Röschmann, Bernarda Fink, Elisabeth von Magnus, Dietrich Henschel, Markus Schäfer, Oliver Widmer

Concentus Musicus Wien, Arnold Schoenberg Choir & Wiener Sängerknaben, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

"Harnoncourt waited over 30 years to return to the 'Great Passion', which, but for his live Concertgebouw recording, he last recorded in 1970 when he had completed only a handful of cantatas in Teldec's defining series. Harnoncourt's revisitation presents a unique statement, one that can't fail to make an impression. Recorded in the sumptuous acoustic of the Jesuitenkirche in Vienna, there's a detectable flavour of southern European oratorio, ebulliently theatrical, immediate and free-breathing, and without the austerity of North German rhetoric. What's recognisably perceived as 'spiritual' in the carefully coiffured renderings of Suzuki (BIS) and Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi) has no place here. Harnoncourt's religiosity isn't imposed but stands rather in a lifetime of musical distillation. This is instantly obvious in the opening chorus, where bridal imagery (in the music's secular, balletic lift) is juxtaposed with the physical imagery of what's at stake (in the broad, enduring bow strokes). While Suzuki's visceral chorale is more spine-tingling, the refinement here of 'Sehet, Wohin?' amid inexorable, paradoxically unquestioning direction, is masterful." - Gramophone Classical Music Guide2010