The St John Passion was one of Bach’s most ambitious undertakings soon after arriving in Leipzig in 1723 but the composer never quite rested on a final proof. By the end of the decade, three performances had produced three different versions – and a fourth was to follow over 20 years later, a text which represents today’s ‘liber usualis’ minus a few of Bach’s miscellaneous afterthoughts.

Two new readings advocate the work in both its most radical and established guises, the former from Nico van der Meel as Evangelist-director. He explores the vicissitudes of the 1725 – which have become especially popular in recent years, notably in recordings by Peter Neumann and Philippe Herreweghe. For the uninitiated, it takes some acclimatisation to forego the visceral incantation of the great ‘Herr, unser Herrscher’ for the panache of the great chorale fantasy ‘O Mensch bewein’, identical to the movement which closes Part 1 of the St Matthew in all but key.

Making up for the more reflective opening is the imminent additional material, the arias ‘Himmel reisse’ and ‘Zerschmettert mich’, drawn from Bach’s repository of ‘mutant opera’ (as Sir John Eliot Gardiner calls it): both unflinching in theatrical immediacy and invention. Self-flagellation (‘on the way to the cross, I shall graze on thy thorns’) and the crushing remorse after Peter’s denial are radically interpolated into the familiar landscape.

Van der Meel is a seasoned Bachian and he guides us with unselfregarding aplomb, though this is ultimately a safe and relatively uneventful reading of a version which requires rather more purpose. The Evangelism is deftly pointed but observational rather than inhabited. Marcel Beekman’s tenor is a versatile and notable instrument (as is Mattijs van de Woerd in a cultivated ‘Eilt’) but the pick of the crop is the ever-improving Maarten Engeltjes, whose ‘Es ist vollbracht’ is a genuinely affecting set piece enhanced by fine gamba-playing. Less consistent is the vocal consort, La Furia, whose chorales are genial but turba sequences decidedly the half-hearted bawling of a rent-a-crowd.

A more illuminating and projected St John (here in its standard and better balanced 1724 version) comes from the Canadian Les Voix Baroques, under Alexander Weimann, whose soloists step out from a 12-piece choir to create a strikingly engaging dialogue between Evangelists and the dramatis personae, and to perform the arias in a work where theological interpretation is so extraordinarily offset against the narrative. Success is partly achieved through a superior and far more emotionally intense recorded sound; if perhaps just too close for the stridency of Matthew White’s ‘Von den Stricken’, it well serves Jan Kobow’s involving and rich-hued Evangelist.

The trade-off for the two ‘scenas’ which Bach added for Good Friday 1725 means forfeiting ‘Ach mein Sinn’ and ‘Erwäge’. Listening back-to-back to both allows us to view clearly how Bach’s compositional ambition in the later score (certainly in terms of singularly extravagant gesture) leads to a kind of affective disunity. Neither of these masterpieces should surely be jettisoned? And what a loss this electrifying performance of ‘Ach mein Sinn’ from Jeremy Budd would be to Weimann’s plan of contemplative angst – one which the director marshals seamlessly into Stephan MacLeod’s admirable ‘Betrachte’ and organically towards a nobly conceived if oddly blended ‘Ruht wohl’.

Of recent releases, Gardiner’s recording (SDG) has a kind of ritualised and glowing potency, with supreme technical delivery, elevating the work like few others. The ATMA disc, in contrast, has a luminous and gently penetrating emotional impact (with one of the most moving accounts of ‘Es ist vollbracht’ in recent years from Meg Bragle). The instruments are discreet and yet integral, and the quality of production adds up to a very significant, incrementally impressive new reading.