James Gilchrist is among the most communicative of storytellers and his lightly articulated, subtly nuanced declamation and, where required, sense of urgency are eloquent and dependable…the many choruses, chorales and arias come across convincingly…Eleanor Minney deserves special mention for her ‘Erbarme dich’…Gardiner directs all with insight, sensibility and a commendably athletic overview which ensures an unflagging sense of drama

The combination of James Gilchrist and Neil Davies as Evangelist and Jesus…is ideal.

an intensely human Bach, sensitive and alert, heart open to every slightest turn of emotion in the Passion story...Gardiner has recorded the St Matthew Passion before, but this new recording is exceptional in its clarity and detail, the summation of his life’s experience of the music.

If a Passion performance has no sense of community it has nothing, and this is surely the making of Gardiner’s account...a thoughtfully moulded, expertly executed and deeply committed reading, so honestly communicative of its intent and so free of self-conscious monumentalism, sententiousness or melodramatics...I believe it to be one of his finest achievements.

Gardiner may have lived with this music for half his life, but still gives the impression that he’s discovering little miracles in it for the first time: there’s never any sense of routine from him or from the performers, despite this being the final performance of a gruelling European tour...One for Gardiner devotees and newcomers alike, then: if you own his earlier recording, you’ll want to hear this for the crackling dramatic energy generated by the live performance.

Gilchrist is an incisive Evangelist, gripping in the passages of drama, and Stephan Loges a noble-toned, idiomatic Christus. Gardiner’s Bach remains a lodestar, provided you are not wedded to one-voice-to-a-part minimalism.

this glorious St Matthew Passion from John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir is musically as near-perfect as anyone could wish...All the Gardiner hallmarks are here: brisk tempi, crisp chorus work and a complete devotion to the text. Gilchrist and Loges excel.

A revelatory psychological document...You will rarely find Matthew’s description...more melodramatically conveyed in music...[Gilchrist is] a storyteller who seems in the midst of the events he is describing, like a war correspondent. You may also feel - if you are a fan of period-instrument textures at their most sinuous and whittled down- that Bach’s score has never been better served than by the English Baroque Soloists.