December 2008 sees Wellington chamber choir Cantoris expanding its ranks and joining with Wellington Chamber Orchestra for a one off performance of Felix Mendelssohn's masterpiece Paulus.
Felix Mendelssohn produced his St Paul oratorio when aged only 27, full 10 years before the more famous Elijah. The text, originally in German, is based on passages from the Holy Scriptures, compiled at Mendelssohn’s behest by his friend Julius Schubring.
Paulus, an Oratorio in two parts, was first performed on May 22, 1836, at the Rhenish Music Festival in Düsseldorf and received its first performance in English on August 26, 1836, at the Birmingham Music Festival. Mendelssohn conducted this performance with the world-famous Jenny Lind in the soprano role.
Mendelssohn began to compose St Paul in Düsseldorf in 1834. In 1835 he was appointed conductor of the renowned Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, ushering in one of the happiest periods of his life. However, death soon cast its shadow when his beloved father to whom he was very close, died. In great anguish, he wrote to Julius Schubring expressing his profound grief but assuring his colleague of his efforts to complete the work on time.
The first performance, on May 22, 1836, was an unqualified success. During his lifetime it was his most performed and popular work, receiving early exposure in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia and the United States, New York in 1838 and Baltimore in 1839). The early Mendelssohn biographer Wilhelm Adolf Lampadius could assert that “no work has ever found the universal recognition in so short a time as the St Paul”, so that 1837 and 1838, “in the history of music”, were no less than the ‘St Paul years’. Although Mendelssohn’s other great oratorio Elijah, completed 10 years later, now holds pride of place in the repertoire that was certainly not always the case.
St Paul contains a wealth of wonderful music, a carefully calculated mixture of recitative, arias and choruses. Especially noteworthy is the diversity of the choruses. At times, the chorus actively engages in the action, recalling Bach’s ‘crowd’ scenes in his Passion music. Several choruses offer complex and challenging contrapuntal fugues, but no less varied are the chorales, which appear as beautiful ‘resting points’ spread throughout the work.
St Paul shows the influence of Bach and Handel both in form and music, particularly in the chorales. Just a few years prior to its conception, Mendelssohn had rediscovered Bach's St Matthew Passion and given it an effective and widely acclaimed performance. St Paul is characterized not only by the inclusion of the aforementioned Protestant chorales, which firmly demonstrate the influence of Bach, but by the fact that one of these chorales actually serves as a Leitmotiv for St Paul, beginning with Bach's Wachet Auf in the overture, and later in the chorus.
St Paul tells the story of Paul's conversion (Paul was formerly known as Saul from Tarsus.) Part I recounts the stoning of Stephen (the first Christian martyr), the miracle of Paul's conversion to Christianity, and closes with Ananias commissioning Paul as a Christian minister.
Part 2 relates to Paul and Barnabas becoming the ambassadors and evangelists of the Christian church, celebrated by another familiar melody, "How Lovely are the Messengers".
The chorus and soloists draw from other passages of the Holy Scriptures, including Isaiah (Old Testament), and Timothy and St John's gospel from the New Testament.
Despite many familiar melodies, St Paul is rarely performed as it has been upstaged in modern times by more favored oratorios such as Handel’s Messiah, Haydn’s The Creation and Mendelssohn’s own Elijah. St Paul has wonderful choral and solo music to offer and of course is rich with Mendelssohn’s remarkable orchestral writing. This performance will take place on Sunday December 7th at 2pm in St Andrews on the Terrace. Following a tradition established by Mendelssohn himself in the year of the oratorio's premiere, Cantoris will be performing the work in English. The solo roles will be taken by the quartet BRIO, better known as respected local singers Janey Mackenzie, Jody Orgias, John Beaglehole and Justin Pearce.