Featuring Nicholas Mulroy (Evangelist), Matthew Brook (Christus) and mezzo-soprano Annie Gill, the Dunedin Consort’s 2007 recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion has been selected as “a winner!” on the Building a Library segment of BBC Radio 3’s CD Review Show.
Surveying numerous recordings of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Jonathan Summerly described his eventual number-one recommendation – the Dunedin Consort directed by John Butt – as “a starting point, an opportunity to consider in new light Bach’s masterpiece”.
Matthew Brook’s performance as Christus on this recording has previously received universal praise from the critics, described by Gramophone magazine as “little short of masterful with the range of colour, risk and gentle courtesy he brings to this superlative emblem of unswerving faith”. Nicholas Mulroy has likewise impressed as the Evangelist: a performance to which he “brings his own striking naturalness of delivery, clarity of diction and honesty” (Gramophone).
Elsewhere in the segment, Jonathan Summerly takes time to highlight countertenor Robin Blaze’s “humility and carefully judged timbral control” in the 1999 Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of Erbarme Dich. He goes on to say: “I apologise to commuters on the 08.47 from Didcott to Paddington on the twentieth of March: the tears were because I was listening to this…The kaleidoscope of colours that Blaze brings to the vocal line is thoroughly beguiling”.
