Classical review: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

OBVIOUS reference points for any composer contemplating a setting of the Easter Passion are the seminal examples of Bach. In his introductory remarks to the Scottish premiere on Thursday of his own St John Passion, James MacMillan declared his references points went further back in religious musical history.

That rang true in a gripping virtuoso performance by the massed forces of the BBC SSO, BBC Singers and London Symphony Orchestra Chorus, with baritone Mark Stone in the pivotal role of Christus.

Under Donald Runnicles’ powerhouse direction they embraced the awe-inspiring universality of a work that is a breathtakingly honest statement by MacMillan of his self-belief, as a composer and as a Christian.

Which brings us back to Bach, and the similar ambitions by MacMillan to create a dual presence, through music, of the Passion’s human and spiritual collision and resolution.

The small narrator chorus (the incomparable BBC Singers) is a corporate embodiment of the traditional Evangelist role; the larger chorus (the solid LSO Chorus) is the mouthpiece of humanity, including Pilate. Their musical character is conveyed by an earthly foundation of 20th-century modalism shot through at critical highpoints with searing dissonance and theatrical vocalisations.

Mark Stone’s Christus, hoisted aloft by the shadowing presence of a weirdly ecstatic and brilliantly played violin duo, was a riveting presence. But it’s in MacMillan’s red-hot orchestration that this setting dons a transcendent originality. Its wailing clarinets, the ethereal intrusion of exotic gongs, the mystical footprints of the lower strings, and the burnished exhortations of the brass are a gut-wrenching counterpoint to the vocal writing and a living embodiment of the subliminal.

KENNETH WALTON