Bach: St. John Passion (BWV 245) - Gardiner & English Baroque Soloists [Blu-ray]

John Eliot Gardiner, together with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, adds a new reading of J.S. Bach’s St. John Passion to his remarkable legacy of recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. Filmed and recorded in the Sheldonian Theatre’s architectural splendour, this acclaimed performance from Good Friday 2021 marked Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s return to live concerts. Boasting a team of exceptional young soloists and choral singing hallmarked by intense drama, expressive nuance and spellbinding musicianship, the album is set for release on 4 March 2022 as a deluxe edition consisting of 2 CDs and a Blu-ray disc which offers the audio recording and the film of the performance in various sound formats, including the immersive Dolby Atmos. The audio recording will also be released digitally.

The critically acclaimed performance, sung from memory, was originally streamed live on DG Stage. “The crowd choruses were thrillingly delivered,” noted The Times (London). “Even better was the way Gardiner shaped every word of the chorales for maximum emotional impact.” Seen and Heard International praised the conductor for building “cumulative tension” across the work’s two parts, while Bachtrack’s five-star review judged his interpretation to be “operatically gripping, concentrated and true to life” and summed up the event as “an Easter miracle from Oxford”.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner says: “I recorded the piece for the first time for Archiv Produktion back in 1986 and it remains truly special to me. Bach conceived the piece as much as an act of worship as a work of religious art. Almost 300 years after it was heard for the first time, it continues to move listeners of all faiths and none.”