Following glowing reviews last year of Matthew Brook’s bass solos in the Dunedin Consort’s Messiah for Linn Records (Gramophone Award Winner 2007), the same collaboration sees his “powerful Jesus” (The Independent) take centre stage on their new recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion (Linn CKD 313). Jonathan Freeman-Attwood rates his interpretation of the final bass aria, ‘Mache dich, mein Herze, rein’, as “little short of masterful with the range of colour, risk and gentle courtesy he brings to this superlative emblem of unswerving faith” (The Gramophone).
Brook captures the essence of the work in his “forthright, very human” (The Daily Telegraph) representation, and the interaction between Evangelist and Christus is of the highest level: “… it is Mulroy’s identification with the outstanding Christus of Matthew Brook which raises the stakes in this performance. The timing between the two and the realism of the musical choreography is both remarkably patient and animated” (The Gramophone).
Future engagements this season include performances in major concert halls all over Europe, with notable debut appearances with the Tonhalle-Orchester, Zurich (an all-Bach programme for conductor Marcus Creed) and the Edinburgh International Festival (two performances: Handel’s Israel in Egypt under Emmanuelle Haïm and a Schütz/Brahms concert with the Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner), as well as a BBC Prom (St John Passion, also with the Monteverdi Choir and Sir John Eliot Gardiner).
