1829 represents, for many, a symbolic rebirth of Bach as a composer whose music was to shape Western musical destiny like no other. But how important Mendelssohn’s celebrated performance of the St Matthew Passion actually was to a Bach revival – as opposed to what it became – is open to debate; Bach continued to be a smouldering influence on many leading composers after his death. Perhaps rather more interesting in Mendelssohn’s 1841 ‘version’ here is how the composer-editor responds to the work’s dramatic and contem-plative ethos. Far from the grandiloquence of later-century performances, Mendelssohn’s forces would have been relatively moderate, the impact surprisingly intimate and the ensemble less unwieldy than history has since recounted.

For all the small pragmatic changes to the text to mirror prevailing taste, Mendelssohn’s predilection for heightening the immediacy of the narrative remains the fascinating conceptual ideal. If not completely at the expense of reflective rumination (where Bach introduced arias as poetic commentaries on the meaning of the ‘action’), Mendelssohn takes the recitative and Christ’s dialogue to be the most directly intensive part of the experience. It is an almost Schützian emotional climate. Mendelssohn also axed some arias, and cut the da capos in others.

A pioneering critical edge to the 19th-century context is given in Christoph Spering’s account from 1992 (listed above) where original instruments provide a particularly poignant frisson to the quilt-like support given in the recitatives by two cellos and double bass, and yet it is a continuo team able to summon astringency when appropriate. Diego Fasolis and his Swiss-Italian forces (in this performance from 1995) achieve a far greater emotional range than Spering, whose alluring élan is too obediently restricted to the least imaginative wing of contemporary ‘period’ practice. But with Fasolis, the performers are freer to engage in the spirit of Mendelssohn’s urgent, touching and yet distinctly febrile response to the individual ‘tableaux’. Indeed, there is enough evidence in old recordings to suppose that the world of Zelter, Mendelssohn and succeeding generations in the 19th century recognised a more sweeping legato style than we perhaps imagine – but not accompanied by slow tempi!

The main misgiving here is the quality of the production, ranging from untidy orchestral contributions, crowd scenes and general sound (microphone clicks, inconsistent perspectives and even talking before movements!). Yet, the compensations are obvious, too: the excellent Christus of Paul Robinson – who is a startlingly responsive presence, as is the splendid Peter Lika for Spering – and Andrew King, although on the light side, certainly carries the day as the Evangelist. The hooting mezzo of Gloria Banditelli is the only vocal disaster, and we can be grateful here that ‘Erbarme dich’ was transposed by Mendelssohn and assigned to a soprano – in this case, the expressive Lynda Russell (who excels, especially, in ‘Aus Liebe’ with its burbling clarinets). For all its overall patchiness, the dramatic immediacy of Mendelssohn’s edition is imparted here in memorable ways, casting new light on its special qualities.