Frank Martin's Golgotha counts among the great liturgical vocal works produced by French, or French-oriented, composers immediately following World War II, such as
Milhaud's Service sacre pour le samedi matin or Honegger's Mimaamaquim, except that Martin's work is much longer and larger in scale than either. Golgotha is also more challenging owing to its long stretches of slightly tough, highly augmented harmonic language; lengthy recitatives; and often very light orchestral support for sung passages. As a representation of the passion of Christ, ranging from Palm Sunday through the crucifixion, Golgotha retains a mood of almost unrelieved piety and low-key penitence, almost as if it were the film about Jesus that Danish film director Carl Theodor Dreyer didn't live to make. Given its general austerity of style and requirement of five soloists, chorus, orchestra, piano, and organ, it's a little surprising that Golgotha has been recorded as many times as it has been. The trajectory of Golgotha recordings goes hand in hand with the work's performance history, as practically all are taken from live performances. Such is the case with Musiques Suisses' Frank Martin: Golgotha recorded at the 2004 Lucerne Festival under
Aloïs Koch and featuring the
Berlin Symphony, the chorus of the Musikhochschule Luzern, and a group of singers who -- other than Michel Brodard, who has the key role of Christ -- are mainly known from their participation on other Swiss classical recordings.
It is not a perfect outing; there are moments of ragged ensemble in the choir, and sometimes the soloists are a little off the mark in terms of pitch. However, Golgotha is such a difficult work that one doesn't feel inclined to be too critical. Finding one's pitch in Martin's rather oblique harmonic fields, and often without genuine support from the orchestral accompaniment, can be a daunting task, and overall this is a decent performance and definitely a very good live one. Nevertheless, the inclusion of applause at the beginning and end of the two discs seems a bit unnecessary, though these are set apart on separate tracks, so one can be thankful for that. As a representative recording of Golgotha, this Musiques Suisses performance passes rather than fails, though there is such stiff competition in this work one wonders if merely "passing" is quite enough. The booklet is very thick, and the user must take care in slipping it in and out of the jewel case; it doesn't quite fit under the pins. There are texts, but for the musical work the text is given in only French and German.