Emio Greco - Pieter C

Emio Greco - Pieter C. Scholten, Holland Festival, [purgatorio] IN VISIONE

I saw some of their shows before. I like them, although he always had a somewhat bad taste in music and sound (my opinion of course!). Now he made a choreography to the Matthew Passion. And not just the 'normal' Matthew Passion. An arranger who should be forbidden to ever work in music again made the adaptation for this show. Ok, this sounds very bold. Maybe he is a very nice guy and a good composer, but yesterday's show made me feel very bad. He managed to take all of the emotion out of the piece. Incredible, Bach is a composer who is still standing strong even when performed badly. The orchestra (Amsterdam Sinfonietta) played well but the music was reduced to almost nothing I realized after watching the whole show. It hit me finally in after about 45 minutes when the arranger combined a flugelhorn and an accordeon in unison!!! I was looking around me, nobody noticed that this sounded very bad! Again, the flugel player couldn't help it, it was the instrumentation.
And the dance. Greco is a great dancer who I love to watch. But it didn't connect at all to me. I didn't see anything in the show. Well, he did a clowns act did drew my attention for some minutes, but that was it. No message, no emotion, no story.

I didn't like it.

This same day I went to Festival Classique and heard Faust/Melnikov/Swart play Brahms horntrio. What a music. And they were trying and doing it. They didn't try to shock for shock's sake. They played the music like it is. Not geniusly, but good, excellent even....