Passion and Resurrection, Writ in Water and Light

July 5, 2002

When the composer Tan Dun accepted a commission from Oregon Bach Festival music director Helmuth Rilling to compose a Passion setting, he perused the Gospel of St. Matthew in search of a metaphor. Instead of the elements one might expect — wine or bread, for example — Tan chose water. References to water suffuse the Gospel text, and Tan’s Water Passion After St. Matthew is drenched in it. As the composer walked onstage to conduct its American premiere at the Oregon Bach Festival, the audience gazed upon 17 large, transparent bowls of water — illuminated, amplified and arranged in a cross in the middle of the stage. And throughout the 90-minute work, percussionists David Cossin, Charles Dowd and Gordon Rencher played the sounds of water — splashing it, shaking it in tubes with stones, pouring sand into it, striking bowls and gongs in it, and more.

Read Brett Campbell’s complete review