Evangelist Ian Bostridge Christ Franz-Joseph Selig Sibylla Rubens Andreas Scholl Werner Guera Dietrich Henschel Schola Cantorum Cantate Domino, Chorus and Orchestra of Collegium Vocale, Ghent Conductor Philippe Herreweghe The Proms have seen a range of Matthew Passions, from 'English' performancs with massed choirs to Joshua Rifkind's performance in 1994 with total vocal forces of eight, which was rough-hewn and exhausting, but often exciting. Philippe Herreweghe's small-scale performance with original instruments could be called middle-of-the-road. This was definitely a concert performance, rather than a liturgical one. It lacked a sense of the sublime, but brought out the detail and suprising exuberance of the music. There were times, for example, the almost operettaish lightness of the alto recitative, Ach, Golgotha and the following aria with chorus, when it wasn't clear whether Bach used musical techniques which have since acquired other associations, or whether Herreweghe was lightening up too far. But, in general, the charm of the intrumental performances (in particular) suggested spiritual uplift and engagement. And the dramatic moments were powerful in contrast. Sind Blitzer, sind Donner really sounded like a force of nature, though sung by a smallish choir. Both orchestra and choir were impeccable as ensembles, and there was some fine playing from the solists in the orchestra, especially the first orchestra oboes, the continuo gamba and the leader of the first orchestra, Sirkka-Liisa Kaakinen. They made the chorales, in particular the much repeated 'Passion chorale' varied and The solists were a premium selection. Andreas Scholl seems made to sing this music, delivering the agility and lightness of the music in a way which reminds you that it wasn't written for Kathleen Ferrier, but also getting over its expressive force. Ian Bostridge is a natural Bach Evangelist, conveying understanding of every word, though tonight he seems just a little bit academic about it. Sibylla Rubens was accurate and elegant, with a fine voice of the right weight, substantial but not big or heavy. The tenor Werner Guera was also fine. Dietrich Henschel seemed less at home in the music than the other singers. He started his first aria in a plodding staccato, and only intermittently loosed up. In spite of his blond curls, he's a little remniscent of Fischer-Diskau, which is a good thing in general but not perhaps for historically informed performance of Bach. The appropriately named Franz-Joseph Selig was not particularly expressive as Christ, though he ha= s a fine German bass voice, with the right liturgical sound for the music. Much more demanding was a performance of Simon Bainbridge's Ad ora incerta last Thursday. It was part of a programme of music by English composers, performed by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gennady Rozhdevshtvensky (whose name, I assure you, is a lot easier to type in Cyrillic), an almost unbearably painful centre to two lightish works, Vaughan Williams' overture to The wasps and Walton's first symphony. Ad ora incerta is a symphonic setting, Mahler style, of four poems by Primo Levi which date from the same time (late 1945) as If this is a man, and cover the same subject matter, his experiences on the way to and in Auschwitz. The poems are incredibly powerful and moving in their own right, evoking a sense of horror in a surreal landscape, redeemed but not made less painful by the companionship of fellow human beings. Bainbridge's setting is a dialogue between a mezzo (deliberately avoiding identifying the voice of the poems with the poet) and a bassoon, sometimes in parallel sometimes in counterpoint, until in the latter part of the final poem we understand that the dialogue is that between the poet and his remembered companion in the concentration camp. Susan Bickley sang the low-lying mezzo part movingly, and with authority. The orchestral music reinforces the sense of horror, and the whole work barely moves. Rozhdevshtvensky's conducting style (in spite of his beaming greeting to the orchestra and audience) seems disinterested, and I wondered at times whether the performance was falling to bits. But it became clear that that was the point. The audience seemed both stunned and confused by the end.