‘English conductor and early music specialist Andrew Parrott’s recent recording of his own reconstruction of the work with his Taverner Consort presents again this watershed performance in Bach’s career, not to mention that of his wife, for whom this was probably one of her last courtly appearances; she increasingly dedicated her time and talents to the demands of motherhood.

With great nuance, rhetorical power, and natural agility Emily Van Evera sings the three soprano arias—all of them from the Matthew Passion, two being the most plaintively expressive numbers from that work and the last an expansive plea for the end to grieving—that would have shown the wide ranging vocal abilities of the composer’s wife.

Parrott has also written a book on the nature of Bach’s choruses in which he argues persuasively that Bach typically had only one singer on each part. These are the performing forces Parrott deploys here. Usually given ponderous overemphasis from far too many singers even in “historically informed” versions, the choruses under Parrott become far more intense and foreboding. These movements achieve a power all the more tragic for the intimacy of their delivery especially in the final chorus—also the last of the Mathew Passion— where the mourners gaze into the crypt with lulling the body to sleep with their voices. A movement originally written to lament a heavenly king becomes a majestic tribute to a princely patron and, now again, a monument to the glittering musical pair that served him so well.’