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Bach in the City — St. Mark Passion
Chicago’s Bach in the City will conclude its debut concert season with the Midwest premiere of British musicologist Malcolm Bruno’s recent reconstruction of Johann Sebastian Bach’s lost St. Mark Passion, BWV 247, at 7:30 p.m. March 20, 2026, at St. Vincent de Paul Church, 1010 W. Webster Ave., Chicago, the organization’s home venue.
Soloists are Hannah De Priest, soprano; Ryan Belongie, countertenor; Oliver Camacho, tenor; and David McFerrin, bass.
Founding Music Director Richard Webster will conduct the 40-member Bach in the City Chorus and an 18-piece period-instrument orchestra.
Webster says the organization’s research suggests the one-night-only event might be the first Chicago performance of Bach’s St. Mark Passion in more than four decades.
Webster, who led the Chicago area’s former Bach Week Festival for a half century, composed music for the Passion’s recitatives (speech-like passages) and turba choruses (crowd reactions) expressly for this performance. Bruno’s reconstruction omits scores for those parts.
"To compose music for the Passion narrative, as it is written in the Gospel of Mark, has been both challenging and humbling,” Webster says. “I have done my absolute best to honor the legacy and style of J. S. Bach."
Webster credits “the invaluable editorial assistance and expertise” of harpsichordist Jason Moy, Bach in the City’s associate music director, with bringing these scores to fruition.
Bruno’s “beguiling” reconstruction
Bach’s music for the St. Mark Passion, first performed in 1731, has been long lost, but the text survives. Combining detective work and informed speculation, scholars over the decades have devised versions of the Passion using pre-existing Bach works that fit the libretto. Bach, like other Baroque composers, frequently recycled his own compositions, a process called parody. It’s widely believed that this is how Bach assembled his St. Mark Passion.
Bruno’s 2019 reconstruction relies, as its foundation, on Bach’s poignant “Trauer-Ode,” BWV 198, a memorial cantata of courtly dignity and spiritual consolation, with movements borrowed from other Bach cantatas to complete the work.
Like the “Trauer-Ode,” this St. Mark Passion surrounds the listener with a glowing sonic palette of flutes, oboes d’amore, violas da gamba, and strings.
In 2025, Concert Theatre Works, Inc., in collaboration with local early music presenters, gave the U.S. premiere of Bruno’s version in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, followed by premieres in New York, Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
Bach in the City’s Webster attended the New York performance.
“It was beguiling, compelling, and very effective,” Webster says.
New York Classical Review hailed Bruno’s realization as “artfully arranged for dramatic and musical effect" and “highly engaging and theatrically satisfying.”
Bruno had the original German texts of the story-propelling recitatives and dramatic crowd reactions translated to English. Webster says that for English-speaking listeners this lends an immediacy and contemporary relevance to the story of the final events of Jesus’s life.
“Sitting in the audience,” Webster says, “I recognized that performing this exquisite new version of the St. Mark Passion amid the visual splendor of St. Vincent de Paul Church would perfectly align with Bach in the City’s mission of presenting works by Bach and his contemporaries in innovative programs Chicago audiences can’t experience anywhere else.”
An “orchestral” approach
Comparing Bach in the City’s staging to the production that toured the U.S. last year, Webster says, “Ours will be more traditional, but hardly conventional.”
The touring production, described by its presenters as a “pocket Passion,” cast a professional stage and screen actor as the Evangelist, speaking rather than singing the scripture-based recitatives. The four soloists served as the chorus, accompanied by a small instrumental chamber ensemble.
“We’re taking more of an orchestral approach and utilizing a full chorus,” Webster says.
In an unorthodox twist, the narrative role of the Evangelist in Bach in the City’s performance will be shared among the soloists rather than being assigned to one singer as in Bach’s well-known St. Matthew and St. John Passions.
Webster envisions the March 20 concert as “a memorable musical prelude to Holy Week in Chicago.”
Event Links
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