Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		5.0

Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 12, 2022

It's only about a month until Easter as this review is being written, and for those who want to start a musical celebration a bit on the early side, Deutsche Grammophon has released a wonderful new performance of Bach's immortal St. John Passion with the venerable John Eliot Gardiner leading his equally venerable Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. Filmed on Good Friday 2021, and with appropriate "social distancing" in place which can be clearly seen in the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, this performance, as some brief notes in the DigiPack mention, marks Gardner's "return to the Yellow Label".

This release's insert booklet details the emotion behind this performance, which reunited the choir and orchestra after a long Covid induced "vacation". Kind of amazingly, all of the singers perform the piece from memory, though the instrumental forces still have music stands and music. In the insert booklet Gardiner gets into how appropriate he felt the use of Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre for the performance was, since it's a "secular" venue which actually resembles a courtroom, meaning the performance could be "staged" in a way so that "characters" like Pilate, Jesus and the Evangelist could be seen as legal adversaries in a way.

The featured soloists include Nick Pritchard, tenor (Evangelist); William Thomas, bass (Jesus); Alex Ashworth, bass baritone (Pilate, bass arias); Julia Doyle, soprano (arias); Alexander Chance, countertenor (alto arias); and Peter Davoren, tenor (arias). There's an immediacy to this performance that should be enjoyed by Bach lovers and Gardiner fans in particular, and while some aspects of the piece are almost unavoidably tragic in scope, there's a celebratory atmosphere that I'm sure many will find uplifting, especially in these perilous times.

Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bach: St. John Passion is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78, for those who opt to view the video side of things (see the audio section below for how the disc is authored in terms of menus and the like). This isn't a reference quality presentation, but it's certainly sharp enough, with good detail levels for the most part. There are some minor combing artifacts that can be spotted and whatever cameras they used tend to feature some slight blurriness at the very edges of the frame for whatever reason. The palette looks natural, but really doesn't pop in any significant way due to the prevalence of brown and black tones.

Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bach: St. John Passion features Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 audio options. Screenshot 10 shows the primary menu that appears at disc boot up, and for those who want only the audio experience, you really don't even need to have a monitor or display of any kind fired up, as long as you can remember which color on your remote accesses which audio option (yellow for LPCM 2.0, red for DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and green for Dolby Atmos). Clicking on "video" on that menu then brings you to the video menu I've uploaded in the ninth position of screenshots. The audio is resplendent in all three options, and the fact that there was social distancing employs may actually add a bit of spaciousness in terms of the spread of sound that is obvious on both the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and probably especially the Dolby Atmos track. Fidelity is superb throughout, with a gorgeously burnished sound from the English Baroque Soloists and brilliant reproduction of both the solo and choral voices. Dynamic range is perhaps not huge, but there are definitely ebbs and flows that all three tracks more than adequately support. Optional English and German subtitles are available on the video side of things.

Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

While there are no real on disc supplements, unless one includes the video aspect (which I'm not, since I consider it to be part and parcel of this release), there are two Bonus CDs offering the entire performance with Deutsche Grammophon's traditional attention to engineering excellence. A nicely appointed insert booklet also contains Charlotte Gardner's essay and a complete libretto in both German and English.

Bach: St. John Passion Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Not to sound overly sacrilegious, but this wonderful concert provides a "resurrection" of sorts for Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, and you can feel the energy pouring out of the combined forces, as well as from Gardiner himself. This is a wonderful release that can be enjoyed as either an audio Blu-ray or a full audio-visual experience. Technical merits are solid, especially the stellar audio, and Bach: St. John Passion comes Highly recommended.