Reviews

A further review from The Guardian of Polyphony's St John Passion at St John's Smith Square with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed by Stephen Layton: "...behind them all, rock-solid, alert to every nuance in the drama, stood Polyphony, diction crisp, phrasing meticulous. Simply superb." St John Passion ★★★★★ And so to JS Bach himself. Print deadlines are unforgiving things and...
St John Passion, Polyphony, OAE, Layton, St John's Smith Square review - defiant performance reveals Bach masterpiece anew.   Every opportunity taken to point up the jagged emotions in the text and music.     The turbulence and agitation of betrayal could be felt from the word go in this galvanising performance of the St John Passion, which administered a jolting urgency to Bach’s radical...
St John Passion review – Polyphony and OAE deliver an outstanding, vivid rendition.   An extraordinarily moving Bach passion contained intensity, radiance and, from Nick Pritchard, the finest live account of the Evangelist this critic has heard. Stephen Layton’s annual performance of Bach’s St John Passion with his choir Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has long been...
JS Bach’s St John Passion opens with a tremendous 14-bar instrumental prelude in which its driving semiquaver rhythm and clashes in oboes and flutes are as unsettling as the events on Golgotha soon to be narrated. If those clashes from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment did not bleat and bite as they can, it was perhaps because conductor Stephen Layton was hurtling through Bach’s...
“I come to hear this every year. For me this is when Christmas begins.” So said the man sitting next to me, as we waited for the performance of Handel’s Messiah that by tradition ends the Christmas Festival at St. John’s Smith Square – the beautiful, glowingly white Baroque deconsecrated church that is so utterly right for this work. So many cherish Handel’s great oratorio at Christmas time, and...
"Directed by Stephen Layton, the [Britten] Sinfonia and the dozen singers of Polyphony warmed up the chilly Barbican stage with a reading of the Oratorio (Parts one, two, three and six) that brought a sense of ritual togetherness to the Brutalist auditorium. The choir, stage left, supplied all the solo roles, with singers stepping out and back for their numbers. The (excellent) woodwinds sat in...