Prom 40: Bach Collegium Japan/Suzuki review – audience lean in for subtle drama

The way the architecture and the organ pipes draw the eye upwards; the hush as a 5,000-strong audience hangs on the words of one person – perhaps the Royal Albert Hall isn’t so far from a cathedral in Proms season, so maybe it’s an apt venue for a devotional work that reaches out to its audience in the way Bach’s St John Passion does. It remains, however, a big place for a small period-performance ensemble to fill with sound. Masaaki Suzuki and his Bach Collegium Japan met this with defiance – the opening chorus had the two oboes sounding out their crunching harmonies forcefully, the choir spitting out sibilant consonants, and the repeating low notes insisted upon by both a double bass and, distinctively, a giant contrabassoon, propped up with its top 10ft in the air.

There were practical tweaks too – not one but two flutes followed Carolyn Sampson’s glinting soprano in her first aria. What was striking, though, was how often Suzuki and his musicians made us lean in to listen, trusting the audience to come to him. Tender passages such as the episode when Jesus ensures his disciple will look after Mary as his own mother were beautifully handled. At the moment of death, in Es ist vollbracht, a lonely viola da gamba joined Alexander Chance’s expressive countertenor in haunting duet – only for the music to explode in colour as the pace suddenly increased and the strings joined in.

Benjamin Bruns’s high notes rang easily in the Evangelist’s flowing narration and the regular BCJ soloist Christian Immler was an intense, almost angry Christ. Shimon Yoshida’s agile voice needed firmer projection in the tenor arias but Yusuke Watanabe’s Pilate was a worthy adversary for Immler in the court scene, his “What is truth?” – hopeless or perhaps bewildered – a touching moment. Immler also sang the bass arias, and when he first stepped out to sing during the scourging, breaking character, it seemed the equivalent of a film director switching to a different shot, the violence still going on yet in slo-mo, at a distance. It was a characteristically subtle yet effective touch from a conductor who finds the drama in Bach.