The St Matthew Passion was first performed in 1727, though we most frequently hear it in editions that incorporate the revisions Bach made in 1736 and 1742. For their Good Friday performance, however, Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music reverted to the original score, for which Egarr has expressed a marked if controversial preference.
The 1727 version is less reflective and darker in tone. In place of the complex closing chorus of Part 1, a plain, sombre chorale follows Christ’s arrest, and at the start of Part 2, a bass, rather than the usual consolatory alto, implacably announces that Jesus is to be taken from us. A lute, meanwhile, is included among the obbligato instruments and turns the bass aria Komm Süsses Kreuz, usually accompanied by a toiling viola da gamba, into something altogether more serene.
Interpretatively, Egarr is vivid, at times unsparing. The Passion narrative, dominated by James Gilchrist’s intense, effortless Evangelist and Matthew Rose’s beautifully sung, authoritative Jesus, flowed tensely into the choruses and chorales, while the arias formed a sequence of heightened emotional responses, immediate rather than meditative, to unfolding events. So when soprano Elizabeth Watts sang of serpents gnawing at the human heart, we sensed real and sudden turmoil, while bass Christopher Purves’s Mache Dich, Mein Herze, Rein surged with optimism and relief. Mark le Brocq was the angry-sounding tenor, Sarah Connolly the immaculate, sorrowing alto.
Powerful though the performance was, Egarr’s decision to emphasise the individual nature of the arias led to a stop-start feel at times, not helped by the barrage of coughing that erupted when anyone so much as paused for a second. I prefer slightly larger choral forces here than two groups of 10, though the Choir of the AAM sang with refined fervour throughout. Orchestrally, it was impeccable.
