Barts Choir

Written for Bach’s first Good Friday in Leipzig in April 1724, the St John is the shorter and more intimate of his two surviving Passion settings. By this time, such works had become much more than a simple narrative, but highly dramatic though Bach’s music is (as at the points when the choir takes the roles of Chief Priests, soldiers and crowd), re-telling the Gospel story remains central, interspersed with reflections on its meaning in solo arias, choruses and the well-known chorales, so that it speaks to listeners in the concert hall today as directly as to Bach’s in church.