St. Matthew Passion by Bach, J. S., Sat 18 Méit 2016, Ó (2016/2016), Seoltóir John Eliot Gardiner

The St Matthew Passion tour began in Spain - almost 290 years after the work was first performed - and travelled across Europe visiting France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. As part of the tour, the Monteverdi ensembles returned to Leipzig in June 2016 to perform this magnificent work at the Bach-Archiv in Thomaskirche - Bach’s own church, where the St Matthew Passion was first performed on 11 March 1725. In an unprecedented tour de force: the Monteverdi Choir performed the work entirely from memory. For a choir that has scaled great artistic heights and even won the title of ‘best in the world’, this abandoning of the safety blanket of the written page may have seemed mere bravado; in fact it stemmed from the desire to seek a level of communication with the audience that would have been unachievable from behind the barrier of the score. The St Matthew Passion is often described as Bach’s crowning masterpiece: a score which he painstakingly reworked and revised, leaving the impression that he was aspiring to some sort of ideal. Even today in a mostly secular society, this masterpiece of the Lutheran church tradition can have an overwhelming effect on audiences, being essentially a human drama of immense struggle, betrayal and forgiveness, love and sacrifice, compassion and pity. A live recording was captured at Pisa Cathedral during the Anima Mundi Festival in September 2016 and released on our SDG label. The recording received critical acclaim and was subsequently nominated for the 2017 Gramophone Awards in the Baroque Vocal category. For more information about the recording please click here.