Passion indeed

‘The dripping blood our only drink/ The bloody flesh our only food…/ Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.’ In spite of that. Anglo-Catholic convert T.S. Eliot knew a thing or two about Easter. The Passion story might end with resurrection and redemption, but it’s a celebration that we achieve in spite of agony, torture and abandonment, a tale whose root lies in the Latin ‘passio’, meaning suffering.

Musical Passion settings are no different — or shouldn’t be. A performance of Bach’s St John or St Matthew Passion should disquiet, even distress, as much as it consoles. But concert performances have become a comfortable festive tradition to slot in somewhere between buying the children’s chocolate eggs and cooking the roast — a Messiah with extra thorns — while now-ubiquitous stagings are simply opera-lite. A Passion that can find its humanity and not just its ritual beauty, that can transform an audience into a congregation, is a rare thing, but one Mark Padmore and the Britten Sinfonia achieve in their skilful reimagining.