J.S. BACH: ST. JOHN PASSION, BWV 245
Thomanerchor, Gewandhausorchester, Reize

The St John Passion, BWV 245, is a setting of the Passion story as related in St John’s Gospel. It was first performed on Good Friday, 7 April 1724 in Leipzig. Bach revised the work in 1725 and 1732, but it is heard most frequently today in the final version he completed in 1749. The German musicologist Christoph Wolff observes that, “Bach experimented with the St John Passion as he did with no other large-scale composition,” and concludes that, “as the work accompanied him right from his first year as Cantor of St Thomas’s to the penultimate year of his life, for that reason alone, how close it must have been to his heart”.

Exactly one year before the great anniversary, the new Thomaskantor in Leipzig and 18th successor to Johann Sebastian Bach, the Swiss conductor Andreas Reize, performed the masterpiece in its original 1724 version together with the Thomanerchor and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and a top-class cast of singers surrounding tenor Julian Prégardien as the evangelist at St. Thomas Church Leipzig.