Clarity of sound and purpose distinguish [this] recording…woodwind are placed in front of the strings, allowing for exceptional detail in the turba choruses [while] the soloists sing throughout, sometimes as a quartet, sometimes with the ripieno choir, affording total unity across the arc of the drama…Evangelist Werner Güra sings with authority

It’s a beautifully recorded version.

Soloists, choir and ensemble are all excellent, and the distribution of soloists and choir in the first and final choruses is unusual and interesting … the choir and orchestra are perfectly together.

Jacobs picks singers to suit his purpose, and all here show a controlled expressive ardency that never allows the performance’s emotional coherence to slip. Werner Güra’s Evangelist is both elegant and immediate, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin are typically excellent, and while the RIAS Chamber Choir is not as coolly blended an ensemble as some, who says it has to be in a piece where personal involvement counts for so much

Güra is a most effective Evangelist.

An immediate, natural-feeling Passion – no showy heroics or histrionics from Jacobs, who has sometimes been known to push the boat out and court controversy in his operatic productions. Here he simply offers a well-thought-out, intelligently-paced and balanced re-telling of the story, clearly and committedly performed, allowing the music and the theology to assume centre stage.

The results are predictably dramatic, and the narrative is gripping thanks to Werner Güra’s commanding interpretation of the Evangelist.

a powerful and individual reading...He favours strongly profiled rhythms, chorales with end-of-line pauses, and full-throated singing from the RIAS Chamber Choir (16 singers, augmented for the chorales).

Every phrase of this riveting Passion sounds as if it has been thought through from scratch, whether in the elaborate way in which Mr. Jacobs varies the number of singers in his choirs, or in the ebb and flow of his tempos.