Bernarda Fink reviews

Graciela Oddone, Dorothea Röschmann, Bernarda Fink, René Jacobs, Richard Croft, Antonio Abete; Akademie Fur Alte Musik Berlin/René Jacobs (Harmonia Mundi)

It is just over 30 years since Nikolaus Harnoncourt made his first recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. I can remember listening with astonishment and joy to the lively dance-like character of the opening chorus, a far cry from any tempo I had grown up with. Now Harnoncourt takes it more briskly, knocking almost three-quarters of a minute off the earlier recording – and it evinced no astonishment at all, such has been the evolution in Baroque music performance over the past quarter-century and more.