La Cetra Barockorchester
Schweizer Jugendchor
Solisten: Raphael Höhn (Tenor/Evangelist) Rafael Fingerlos (Bariton/Jesus) Bodek Janke (Percussion)
Nicolas Fink, Conductor

Gordon Hamilton: Markus-Passion (world premiere)

As part of the closing concert of the Bachwochen Thun on September 7, 2025, a new St. Mark Passion for choir and orchestra by the Australian composer Gordon Hamilton will be presented in the Thun City Church. The starting point for this is the mysterious St. Mark Passion BWV 247 by Johann Sebastian Bach, which was premiered in Leipzig on Good Friday 1731. Bach's music is unfortunately lost. Thanks to the completely preserved libretto by Christian Friedrich Henrici (alias Picander), the work can be reconstructed to a certain extent. In the recent past there have been numerous attempts to reconstruct the St. Mark Passion based on a historical model. Gordon Hamilton's St. Mark Passion is intended to go far beyond previous approaches; both through a reconstruction in the style of Bach, as well as through an addition of contemporary music or a new baroque setting of Picander's text. On the basis of Bach's Passion, a new musical work is to be created, written in a new, understandable musical language and containing a modern reinterpretation of the libretto: an ideological focus will be on the idea that a society can go down terrible wrong paths despite appropriate warnings. Stylistically, the new Passion will move back and forth between different musical styles like a kaleidoscopic. But Bach's music will also be heard in its original form: the eleven traditional chorales in particular will blossom into islands of contemplation. The commissioned work will be written by Hamilton explicitly for baroque orchestra with a tuning pitch of 415 Hz and with the instrumentation intended by Bach for the St. Mark Passion; the only exception is that the continuo group will be expanded with percussion and electronic instruments.