St John Passion

JS Bach

27th March 2025 – 7.30pm

Tickets £30 on the door

Holy Trinity Church

Sloane Square, Chelsea Nearest tube Sloane Square

Canticum Chamber Choir with Counterpoint

Nathan Vale – Evangelist

Alex Jones – Christus 

Rachel Allen – Soprano

Hannah Pedley – Mezzo-Soprano

Timothy Nelson – Baritone

Just over 300 years after its first performance, in Leipzig, Bach’s St John Passion, his first really large-scale composition, still overwhelms by its dramatic power. This is evident from the turbulent opening chorus, with its agonized dissonances, through the crossfire of exchanges between Pilate and the crowd, to the tender, lilting rhythm of the final chorus and the radiant chorale, with its hope of resurrection, which brings the work to an end.

As so often, Bach takes an established musical form, the oratorio on the suffering and death of Christ, and raises it to a height never before achieved and rarely matched since.

Mark Forkgen – Conductor