Paul McCreesh

“Bach purists might baulk at the use of solo voices for choruses. Here, however, the matchless talents of vocalists and instrumentalists validate this choice.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2007 ****

“Kozená has one of those voices that seem to go straight to the heart” (Gramophone)

“Paride el Elena contains much striking and sensuously beautiful music, and this new set does it proud.” BBC Music Magazine, May 2008

“In the distinguished performance history of the Great Passion, this is a dynamic and powerful reading. What we have here, primarily, is a compelling directorial vision, a dramatically cohesive whole. The only 'controversial' aspect is the use of single voices in the chorus, thereby applying the research presented in the last two decades by Joshua Rifkin and Andrew Parrott.
However, as it happens, Paul McCreesh sees this option as a flexible way of enhancing the rich expressive possibilities of the St Matthew, a means to a somewhat greater end, thankfully, than joining the band of zealots who seek world domination in Bach vocal performance. And there can be no denying that McCreesh uses the single voices to great and encouraging effect.
The warm intimacy of expression in the chorales is often spellbinding, the lucid realism of the madrigalian commentaries touchingly palpable and the crowd scenes almost crazed, as if you were among the mob. McCreesh's pragmatism also ensures that his quality singers produce a rich tonal body rather than a pushed, squawking consort.
There's some outstandingly characterised singing to be heard here, and a few missed opportunities too. Deborah York sounds somewhat al dente in her soprano arias, a limited emotional range partly accentuated by the colour and subtlety of expression of Magdalena KoOená's 'Buss und Reu' as well as the enraptured and troubled 'Ach, nun ist mein Jesus hin!'. Mark Padmore's Evangelist is highly charged and responsive: at times he hovers, regaling the facts of the matter with disarming poise; at others he becomes agitated, even manic. He seems somehow implicated in Peter's denial in a tableau performed with quite remarkable dramatic power, setting up KoOená's 'Erbarme dich'. Hers is one of the most painfully beautiful performances in years, even if the violin obbligato bulges rather too much.
Of the two basses, the Christus of Peter Harvey conveys neither gilded halo nor testosterone- fired ruddiness but he remains an effective and constant companion. Stephan Loges is rhetorically imploring in timbre, unafraid to take risks and a singer you listen to attentively.
There's yet to be a clear leader in St MatthewPassion recordings, even if that were desirable.
The quality of the production is mainly firstrate, though there are the usual dips and troughs you expect from such a challenging undertaking.
'Können Tränen' is a scrappy and flat affair with a strangely below-par Susan Bickley, and the strings aren't always universally impressive.
Overall, if not as culturally resonant as Harnoncourt's remarkably mature and poetic reading, McCreesh's interpretation has an unremitting singularity of purpose, as aesthetically Protestant as Harnoncourt's is Catholic. A memorable and vitally conceived account.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Though Paul McCreesh uses minimum forces for Bach's masterpiece, with one voice per part, the result has the sharpest dramatic impact, thanks not only to the incisiveness of the performance but also to the vivid immediacy of the recorded sound.” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“This is a remarkable recording. In some ways it's like a rediscovery, for here's an approach not too far from Pro Cantione Antiqua at its best and yet that group never recorded the work. The Gabrieli Consort adds chant to the Requiem Mass itself, thus creating more of a context for Victoria's magisterial work.
We have therefore the Epistle and preceding prayer, the Tract, Sequence, Gospel, Preface, Lord's Prayer and Postcommunion in addition to the polyphony; this also means, for example, that the Kyrie is sung nine-fold with alternating chant instead of simply three-fold only in polyphony.
We can presume that the chant was taken from a suitable Spanish source by Luis Lozano Virumbrales, who's an expert in this field and the author of the insert-notes together with Paul McCreesh.
The performance itself is stately and imposing, with a tremendous homogeneity of sound: the use of an all-male choir, together with the added chant, lends it a tangibly monastic feel, though it would have been a fortunate monastery indeed that had falsettists of this quality. About the performance of the chant there are two points of interest: first, that it's doubled, like the polyphony, by a shawm, common Spanish practice at this period, and second, that McCreesh isn't afraid to have the falsettists singing the chant too.
The pace of the polyphony often seems unhurried, but never feels slow, and Westminster Cathedral Choir is faced with the hugely reverberant acoustics of its home building. From the beginning the singing is involving and incarnate, but the real magic comes nearer the end: from the Agnus Dei onwards one feels that the Gabrieli Consort have really got the measure of the music and is allowing it to speak through them. The final great responsory, the 'Libera me', is performed with heart stopping power and conviction.
McCreesh's approach shows how the Mass would have fitted into and complemented the liturgical framework without ever losing its own internal power and drama. A revelatory disc.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010