Looking like a page torn from Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell, Rembrandt’s 1653 sketch The Three Crosses served as the inspiration for Frank Martin’s landmark oratorio, Golgotha. During the worldwide tumult of 1945, the Swiss composer began to transform a diminutive 15"?x?18" etching into a 90-minute leviathan for mixed choir, vocal soloists, organ and orchestra.
Cappella Amsterdam and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and National Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Reuss, deftly handle the composer’s narrative meditation on the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Interweaving the viewpoints of each of the Gospels with psalms and the meditations of St. Augustine, Martin departs from the liturgical constraints followed by Bach in hopes of allowing listeners to arrive at their own spiritual epiphanies. The music here is intentionally restrained, only selectively allowed to rupture, such as in the opening brass dissonances, the chorus crying, “Father! Father! Father!”
Like Rembrandt, Martin places the spotlight on Christ, sung here with gratifying pathos by Mattijs van de Woerd, whose tender baritone embodies the resignation of one whose fate is predestined. The solos throughout Golgotha dip in and out of the choral and orchestral lines with a Debussy-like fluidity while Reuss masterfully layers the instrumentalists behind the text, save for moments such as the exquisitely forlorn bassoon solo introducing “No. 6 Meditation.”
As with Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” listeners are compelled to cast their eyes profoundly inward. This is not music to scrub the tub to.
- Doyle Armbrust
published in Time Out Chicago on March 31st, 2010