Art and the moment combined powerfully on Good Friday when the choir Polyphony and period orchestra Canzona performed Bach's St John Passion under the irresistible conducting of Stephen Layton. The audience was full, hot and obedient into the last chorale. This was a profound re-examination of the two-millennia myth at the heart of Western civilisation.
The tenor who sings the Evangelist with greater clarity, brightness and dispassionate authority than John Mark Ainsley has not yet been born. He sang of Peter's denial and bitter weeping and we shared the guilt. He described the appeasing early prisoner-release of Barabbas and we felt the crisis.
David Wilson-Johnson's Jesus stood by guiltlessly, intoning his quotes with potent, iron heaviness. The choral crowd demanded blood with savage and rhythmic appetite. How they boiled chromatically in No23! Choruses tailed recitatives with gripping fluency. The story lived.
Bach humanist Protestantism affirms no factual resurrection. The four soloists deliver poetic personal interpretations. Soprano Emma Kirkby mourned the innocent's death with pure, floating tone and heart-fluttering, semiquaver palpitations. Alto Catherine Wyn-Rogers sang with warmth and worldliness of the release she knew with the Master. Tenor James Gilchrist hero-worshipped the Lord with a young man's unblemished idealism. Bass Neal Davies boldly flew for Jesus over long runs, like a fighter pilot in a Holy War, while the chorus backed his mission with crisp interjections.
Canzona played with ripe attack, the continuo was imaginative, and the baroque wind dryly colourful, but the glory of the day was Polyphony's.