STÖLZEL: Brockes passion, 1725
(Hungarian premiere)

Organiser: Filharmonia Hungary
Co-operating partner: Haydneum

Today, the concept of Passion is deeply linked to Bach’s two surviving Passion compositions. However, the Baroque Passion repertoire was much broader than often believed, and many of its compositions are only now coming back into view after centuries of neglect. This concert provides a rare chance to hear one such rediscovered masterpiece. Although Barthold Heinrich Brockes was primarily a civil servant, he made a lasting impact on music history in 1712 by writing his own Passion libretto. As one of the first in the German-speaking world to do so, he used the operatic recitative style common in Italian opera to tell the story, while creating original texts for the arias and choruses that matched the emotional and dramatic moments. This effectively laid the groundwork for the structure that Bach later used in his Passion settings. Brockes’s libretto drew the attention of leading composers, being set to music by figures like Handel and Telemann, among others. Bach also borrowed some passages but never composed a complete setting of Brockes’s text. At the same time Bach was creating his Passion works, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel produced a full musical setting of Brockes’s libretto. Bach respected Stölzel greatly and performed some of his works in Leipzig. Though Stölzel’s Brockes Passion faded from the concert scene for many years, it has recently regained interest. Attendees of this Palm Sunday concert will be among the first in Hungary to experience this extraordinary piece.