One thing that I do miss in Italy over Easter is a local performance of a Bach Passion – the most appropriate Holy Week music to listen to. For many years when living in London we used to attend Bach Passion performances in the church of Saint George, Hanover Square, the church where my dad was christened. The Saint Matthew Passion would take up a whole afternoon with a short interval and we listened intently to these marvellous renderings of perhaps the greatest Christian piece of music ever written.

If we had not been thinking so much about putting things straight in our new house we could have attended a performance of Bach’s Saint John Passion in the cathedral of Milan. However, all is not lost as thanks to the incandescence of the internet we can catch what will undoubtedly be a fabulous rendering of this masterwork on https://www.duomomilano.it/en/.

I did attend a performance of the Saint John Passion in Florence some years ago – an occasion never to be forgotten for some fine singing and, of course, the setting of the church of San Felice located on the south bank of the River Arno, just west of the Pitti Palace. Predominantly Gothic, it has a Renaissance façade by Michelozzo and a crucifix attributed to Giotto.

This year I’m resigning myself to a version of the Saint John given by the brilliant Netherlands Bach society and available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMf9XDQBAaI

The Saint John Passion is half as long in length as the more famous Saint Matthew and unlike the latter was revised several times since its first performance in Leipzig in 1724. The version we hear today dates from the 1740s.

From the opening chorus with its biting suspensions and menacingly throbbing bass line the Saint John Passion for me seems ‘wilder’ than Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion. The action moves more quickly and the impact is consequently more concentrated, However, by the time the last chorus is intoned all is calm and all passion spent.  The words Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine truly reflect this resignation (‘Rest well holy bones’).  

Anyway if not a Bach Passion I’m hoping to attend another great work designed for this Christian liturgical time of year, Pergolesi’s ‘Stabat Mater’, written practically on the composer’s death-bed at the age of just 26 and to be performed at Lucca’s church of Santa Maria Forisportam tomorrow, Good Friday.

Clearly in all cases this Good Friday will have the added poignancy of pointing towards the utter obscenity of pharisaic despotism in another part of Europe. It is so utterly unbearable that we should have to witness the crucifixion of the Saviour reflected in the thousands of largely civilian dead now littering the besieged towns and battlefields of Ukraine – which name, ‘Ukraine’, incidentally means ‘borderland’ and, as such, like other borderlands (just think of the Scottish borders) has been fought over by so many invaders from the Mongols to the present muscovite neo-tsar.   How could we ever find the strength and munificence of purpose to say, like Jesus on the Cross, ‘forgive them for they know not what they do—‘?

(Our tulips are early this year).