Bach: St John Passion (Concert Review - The Independent, 2005)

The choral director Stephen Layton's Good Friday performances with his chamber choir Polyphony, of Bach's St John Passion at St John's Smith Square, have become quite a fixture in recent years, to judge by the lengthy last-minute box office queue hoping for return tickets this time round.

And it's no surprise, either, for not only had he the support of the period players of The Academy of Ancient Music, but an especially impressive team of soloists, led by the accomplished young Swedish lyric tenor Anders Jerker Dahlin as the Evangelist, with the stentorian bass Stephen Roberts as Christus and the eloquent baritone Thomas Guthrie as Pilate. Add to these the agelessly fresh soprano of Emma Kirkby, the seasoned countertenor of James Bowman and the vastly versatile young bass of Roderick Williams for the various reflective arias, and expectations could hardly have been higher.

Yet at first it seemed we were in for a relatively neutral St John. With a choir of 23 voices and some 20 players, Layton appeared to be setting a course midway between the more massive "traditional" approach and the stripped-down forces Bach probably had to make do with. And while Layton launched the opening chorus at a relatively forward pace, he seemed to play down the lacerating woodwind dissonances, which, when emphasised, can impart still greater urgency.

But it soon became evident that this was the launch-pad to a steady screwing up of pace and intensity, with the work's central altercations between affronted Evangelist and vengeful crowd-chorus acquiring an almost operatic impetus, while the periodically interpolated chorales were dispatched briskly as possible. Only towards the end, where more contemplative numbers predominate, did Layton allow the music a little more room. (Even with breaks for retuning, the work was over in an hour and 50 minutes.)

Compared with the more elaborate St Matthew Passion, there is much in the St John that responds to such fierce intentness. Roberts's brusque characterisation of Christ is plausible in this context, and one had to admire the tireless skill with which Dahlin inflected his febrile narrative and the split-second timing of Layton's choir, even if the predominant unease seemed to distract the seraphic Kirkby into the rare error of a missed entry in her final aria.

There were moments of calm, too: Bowman and the viola da gamba of Reiko Ichise interwove plangently through the supreme elegy of "Es ist vollbracht". And no single account of the St John could possibly encompass all its alternative implications. If Layton seemed to want to emphasise the sarabande rhythm of the final chorus, another conductor will doubtless remind us it is a sacred lullaby. In the end, the audience seemed moved enough. A profound silence greeted the final cessation of the music, and only after that, applause.

Bayan Northcott