Bach to Gabrilowitch

The end of Lent is a season of music; composers, stirred by the most human and the most tragic story in the world, have written notes to sound its sadness or its glory. The greatest of all such music is The Passion of Our Lord according to St. Matthew, by Johann Sebastian Bach; this, 199 years after it was heard for the first time, was twice performed last week in Manhattan by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra directed by Ossip Gabrilowitch.

There is no variation of critical opinion concerning the St. Matthew Passion. "The deepest expression of devotional feeling that the art of music affords," is the description which critics attempt to elaborate. Lawrence Gilman, able critic of the N. Y. Herald-Tribune, mentioned "pages of sorrowful, solacing tenderness, with their transported beauty, their touching devoutness, their measureless humanity. . . ."

Gabrilowitch brought his musicians to Manhattan in two special trains of twelve cars each, with two baggage cars and four diners. He wrote to the papers, asking that audiences attend his performances in a special mood of gravity and that they refrain from wearing bright colored clothes, lest there should be discord in the earnest surroundings of Holy Week, and lest the spell of a "musical masterpiece" be injured. Further, Mr. Gabrilowitch said this: "In all the years of my musical experience I have never found as much joy and inspiration in any artistic task as in the study and preparation of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The performance . . . represents the work of three consecutive years. . . ."

There was no variation of critical opinion concerning the performance which Conductor Gabrilowitch presented. The chorus, dressed in black, and the soloists, with a proper effort at perfection, voiced the humble and victorious sorrow of the music they were singing. The tricky imitations which alone delighted its first auditors, the vocal echo of a cock's crowing, were of course not emphasized. The score had been shortened from four and a half hours of playing time to two and a half. Critics agreed that the cuts and emendations had been wisely effected.