Bach’s St John Passion review — Gardiner and Padmore clash

St John Passion
Battersea Arts Centre, SW11
★★★☆☆

St John Passion
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford
★★★★☆

Like grizzly bears returning to prowl the tundra after months of hibernation, two of Britain’s most eminent interpreters of Bach’s sacred music went head to head on Good Friday. In the Oxford corner, John Eliot Gardiner brought his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists to the Sheldonian to stream Bach’s St John Passion. In the London corner, the atmospheric Battersea Arts Centre — its walls still marked by the fire that swept through it six years ago — was the venue from where Mark Padmore and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment decided to stream . . . guess what? Bach’s St John’s Passion.

Mark Padmore and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at Battersea Arts Centre

ZEN GRISDALE

Comparisons may be invidious, but