Ravinia Festival: Tan Dun's Water Passion

The water theme that ripples through the classical music programming at this summer's Ravinia Festival is management's way of christening the latest adornment to the verdant grounds of Ravinia Park.

Patrons arriving at the grand entrance are greeted by a new aquatic sculpture, titled Chorus, with illuminated jets of water that leap in sequence. Hence the host of water-inspired works, old and new, that occupy a goodly portion of the 2016 schedule.

The first and newest of these works arrived Friday night with the Chicago-area premiere of Tan Dun's "Water Passion after St. Matthew," a ritualistic re-enactment of the biblical Passion story for men's and women's choruses and an unusual array of instrumentalists, performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and assisting musicians under chorus director Grant Gershon. It was an important event, and the only pity of it was that the Martin Theatre looked to be no more than half full.

"Water Passion" originated out of a series of Passion commissions by Germany's Internationale Bach Akademie Stuttgart to commemorate the 250th anniversary of J.S. Bach's death in 2000. (Another of those commissions, Osvaldo Golijov's "La Pasion Segun San Marcos," had its local premiere at Ravinia in 2002.) The Chinese composer, perhaps most widely known for his score to the Academy Award-winning film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," came up with an utterly original and compelling musical and dramatic conception.

The biblical account of Jesus' betrayal, crucifixion, death and resurrection is the pretext for an intriguing fusion of Eastern and Western musical-dramatic elements that draws heavily on water as metaphor (the unity of the eternal and external), symbol (baptism, renewal) and an actual musical instrument, in Tan's nearly 90-minute piece.

Two percussionists "play" large bowls of water in which various objects are immersed and struck so as to produce shifting pitches. Chorus members also dip hands (and even, in the case of several women, their hair) in water basins, most notably in the "cleansing" ritual that closes the piece. In another gesture related to nature, the performers are called upon to rub stones together, producing waves of percussive clicks that underscore key dramatic moments, sometimes in tandem with solo violinist Shalini Vijayan and cellist Cecilia Tsan (both wonderful). The wild, bluegrass-style duet between a percussionist and the fiddler in "Stone Song" leapt out as a highlight.

The choral writing also draws on Asian and Occidental traditions, including a choralelike section in Western harmonization but many other pages derived from the bent tones, sliding pitches and throat-singing drones common to Chinese folk music and Chinese opera. Members of the Master Chorale — who had given the Los Angeles premiere of "Water Passion" in 2005 and the Chicago premiere of John Adams' "The Gospel According to the Other Mary" at Ravinia in 2013 — rose mightily to their demanding parts under Gershon's precise, committed direction.

The singers impressed as much with their soft singing as when they erupted in violent shouts to mock Christ, supported by the clanging of metal bowls. All previous musical settings of this portion of the Passion play are decorous by comparison.

One could have nothing but the highest praise, too, for the solo singers, each of them coping amazingly well with the technical and expressive rigors of their multiple, gender-fluid roles. With her almost blindingly pure vocal timbre, soprano Delaram Kamareh climbed to the unearthly heights of Tan's vocal lines. Bass-baritone Stephen Bryant was no less intense and skilled in his various vocal tasks.
This was not to slight the dauntless virtuosity of the three hyperactive percussionists: David Cossin, John Wakefield and Theresa Dimond.

Cramming so many performers on the small playing area of the Martin Theatre made it nearly impossible for the listener to appreciate the Christian symbolism Tan built into his distribution of performers. It was the sole miscalculation in an otherwise fine, involving performance. "Water Passion" also kicked off Ravinia's seasonlong observance of the centenary of the beloved American choral maestro Robert Shaw.