A passionate live MacMillan

This live recording of James MacMillan’s St John Passion conveys all the excitement and energy of the work’s premiere.

Composer: MacMillan
Repertoire:  St John Passion
Artists:  Christopher Maltman (baritone), London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus/Colin Davis
Rating:   5/5
Genre: Vocal/Orchestral
Label: LSO Live LSO 0671

Beethoven hoped his Missa Solemnis, written ‘from the heart’, might ‘return to the heart’. Something similar propels James MacMillan’s St John Passion. The composer presents his musically vivid, dramatically charged telling of Christ’s suffering and death as an act of revolutionary change. After listening to LSO Live’s recording of the work’s world premiere last April, I wish I’d been in the audience. Thankfully, the charged atmosphere and sense of this being something special, a composition destined to last, launched with a great performance under Colin Davis, register fully on disc. A recording for repeated listening and total spiritual immersion.