Daniel Reuss, Martin: Golgotha
Featured Album
Balancing a palpable sense of dread and oppression with a deft orchestral touch
Frank Martin, the Swiss composer, wrote this dramatic, almost apocalyptic piece right after the Second World War. Although it follows the familiar Passion story, Golgotha is actually closer in spirit to Verdi's Requiem in its dramatic, storming-the-gates-of-Heaven intensity than it is to the liturgical settings of Bach. Ambitious and sprawling, Martin's piece may also remind listeners of two other choral/orchestral works of the 20th century: Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and Janacek's Glagolitic Mass. Not just for the occasional musical similarity — although the glorious choral writing in Martin's closing "Resurrection" recalls the finale of Gurrelieder — but because all of these massive and slightly unwieldy pieces for soloists, chorus, and orchestra are such rarities on concert stages and CDs.
Martin was a master of textures (and one of the earliest composers to write seriously for the electric guitar); in Golgotha he balances a palpable sense of dread and oppression with a deft orchestral touch, as in the subtle colors of "Le Discours au Temple"; and an air of looming menace is built right into the queasy, rising melodies of "Jesus devant le Sanhedrin." The piece also gets a serious boost from the acclaimed Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. The vocal solos are heavy on the recitatives and short on actual arias; it's the chorus that gets much of the work's most expressive moments, and the EPCC, now world-famous for its effective championing of composers like Arvo Pärt and Veljo Tormis, rises beautifully to the challenge.
Two other excerpts from the piece bear special mention: "Gethsemane" is the dramatic linchpin of the work, and gives the soloists their most ingratiating music. And "Meditation" is just what the title promises, a Messiaen-like musical respite from the sturm und drang that surrounds it.
