Handel's Brockes Passion
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Academy of Ancient Music, the Barbican, London, 19th April 2019
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On Good Friday 2019, three hundred years - almost to the day - since its first known performance, I had the great privilege to draw as the Academy of Ancient Music performed Handel’s Brockes-Passion . A special celebration and culmination of a major project for the AAM, read more on their website here .
Previously unknown to me, Handel's Brockes-Passion relates the Christian story in vividly physical, near-visceral terms and yet the psychological and emotional pain of the story are no less clearly drawn. A dual agony of physical and psychological torture emerges, told through some of Handel's most beautiful writing.
My heartfelt thanks to the Academy of Ancient Music and to all involved for allowing me to draw with you, it was a very powerful and profoundly moving performance.
The raw intensity of Brockes’ text unleashes all Handel’s power to evoke the whole range of human feelings – outrage, remorse, shock, awe, brutality, grief, tenderness, love, rapture and many more, in swift succession and with tremendous cumulative force."
Dr Ruth Smith (Cambridge) Handel scholar, author of Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth Century Thought (CUP)
See my First Responses, drawn during the performance on Good Friday and developed in my studio immediately afterwards.