Helmuth Rilling conducts Bach's St. Matthew Passion

In brief: As a scholar, as a technician, as a chef de l'orchestre, Helmuth Rilling is outstanding. As a musician, he fails miserably.

The first few bars of the first chorus summed the entire three hours up. Although the Taipei Philharmonic is a modern ensemble, Rilling paid immaculate attention to technical details for baroque performance: no vibrato, non-legato, even the choirs' German pronunciation was excellent – better, even, than the alto soloist's. But at what a musical cost! Anyone who knows about period performance will appreciate the fact that baroque musicians didn't have our modern concept of legato, but that does not mean the music should sit flat without any shaping of lines; besides, isn't Bach's mastery of counterpoint supposed to be found in his multi-linear structures? In the end, I felt I could truly appreciate just how impressive Bach's music is, simply because it was still very moving even under such an unmusical baton.

In addition, with all the attention paid to accuracy, Rilling nevertheless fails to notice flaws in the very basics of music. Throughout the entire performance, the orchestra's tuning was off, sometimes resulting in truly cringeworthy clashes between the cello and organ. As a general rule, sharps were all too high, and flats were all too low. Also obvious was the fact that the orchestra's strings had a hurried crash course in baroque playing. It is easy to tell the strings to play senza vibrato, but it's almost impossible to teach them to use only the bow for producing all the different shades and tone colors in one or two weeks, much less so if the conductor in question is not a string player. In the end, the strings sounded flat, dull, and thin throughout, with only superficial details adhering to baroque performance. Add bad intonation to the non-vibrato mix, and we have a disaster waiting to happen.

But, in any case, the audience's reception was fantastic. This was supposed the first Taiwanese performance of the St. Matthew Passion, and judging from the thunderous applause and countless curtain calls, future performances of such masterpieces could just as easy find such an enthusiastic audience. Let's just hope that our ears can be blessed with a performance worthy enough to be called "music".