Up, up and away with J S Bach
Damian Thompson is lifted up to heaven at St John's, Smith Square
23 May 2008

Johann Sebastian Bach's church cantatas are the jewel in the crown of Baroque music - and this would be true even if there were only, say, 20 of them, as opposed to 200. The composer displayed every facet of his skill in these works, written to be performed against the rather solemn - not to say pulverisingly dull - background of a three-hour Lutheran church service built around a sermon.

Dance rhythms of every variety pulse through even the most stately movements. Bach's unique ability to bounce a familiar hymn tune over leaping strings and twisting woodwind enables him to convey more than one theological idea simultaneously. Hope and fear (specifically fear of death) are closely juxtaposed in the scores and texts of his cantatas; serenity is achieved through comforting, joy through the relief of tension. The contrast with the one-dimensional smugness of post-Vatican II hymns is too embarrassing to contemplate.

On Friday, Philippe Herreweghe and the Collegium Vocale Gent performed three Bach cantatas (two of them slightly misleadingly known as oratorios) under the heading "A Bach Spring", as part of the Lufthansa Baroque Festival at St John's, Smith Square. The works were the Easter Oratorio, the Whit Monday cantata 68 (Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt - "God so loved the world") and the Ascension Oratorio. These offered us three different expressions of Christian joy, albeit not in the right order: wonder at the Resurrection, gladness at the coming of the Holy Spirit, and awe touched with anxiety at the Ascension of Jesus into heaven.

Herreweghe's Belgian ensemble have made many superb recordings of Bach's sacred music. They use period instruments, but create a smoother, less astringent effect than Harnoncourt or Gardiner; less dramatic, too, on occasion. The term "de luxe" sometimes comes to mind.

Not at this concert. The relatively dry acoustic of St John's, coupled with the unusually small forces - the soloists formed part of a choir of 12 - revealed rough edges and the occasional misjudged intonation. It really didn't matter. If anything, the tiny flaws added to the authenticity of the experience. One thought: this is what it must have been like for the original congregation, on a good day. (Bach was always complaining about the inadequacy of his performers, who had only a few days to learn their parts.)

St John's was built in 1728, just after Bach completed the third cycle of cantatas for St Thomas's, Leipzig. The interior, in which Corinthian columns hold up galleries where poor souls were subjected to scriptural exegesis, is a classic English example of Protestant Baroque, that seeming contradiction in terms explored so thoroughly by Bach. (Incidentally, though the pews in the nave may have gone, the tightly packed canvas chairs are every bit as uncomfortable: if St John's is now a concert hall, why can't it be furnished like one?)

Herreweghe's soloists were not his "A" team: none of them was of the calibre of Carolyn Sampson, who opened the festival the night before with Handel arias. But they were all Baroque specialists, with dextrous techniques to match. Dorothee Mields exuded carefree happiness in the soprano aria from the Easter Oratorio, while the tenor Jan Kobow displayed an appropriately airy tone in the Ascension Oratorio recitative describing how "a cloud did bear him off before their eyes, and he now sits at the right hand of God".

This oratorio gives us a fascinating insight into Bach's virtuosity as a composer. The alta aria "Ach, bleibe doch", in which the singer begs Jesus "not to flee from me so soon", is set to a tune identical to the orchestral accompaniment of the Agnus Dei from the B Minor Mass; but we never hear the splendid melody placed on top of it in the Mass. Yet there is no sense of anything lacking in "Ach, bleibe doch". On this occasion, less is more - or, at least, just as much.

The following aria, for soprano, is equally beautiful: Herreweghe's wind players are second to none, and here the unison flutes and oboes combined with the voice to create what the Bach scholar Alfred Dürr calls "the impression of an upward gaze, with all earthly weight seemingly eradicated".

But for me, as always in this work, the highlight was the final chorus. Instead of the customary simple four-part chorale, Bach pulls off one of his D major specials: a glorious concertante movement in which the hymn is framed by trumpets above and timpani below.

My CD of this piece is by Herreweghe, and it's so thrilling that I always have to listen to it twice. That wasn't an option last Friday, but the bonus was that the Collegium Vocale were on even more sparkling form than in their recording. This was an Ascension Oratorio that truly lifted us up to the heavens.