In BFC’s rehearsals for Bach’s St John Passion at the 2026 Brighton Festival, we tested our powers of recall, flexed our acting muscles and discovered why St John’s Gospel is like a river
By Emma Gregg
The Brighton Festival Chorus is thrilled to be performing JS Bach’s St John Passion at the 2026 Brighton Festival. It will be an immersive, semi-staged concert, dissolving the unseen barriers between singers, players and audience.
Producing the Passion
Featuring the Britten Sinfonia, a cast of young international soloists, Brighton Festival Chorus and Youth Choir with some audience participation, this landmark performance will open the festival’s 60th anniversary classical music programme, and will mark the 60th year since BFC first took part.
“This is a stellar work of canonical music, performed at scale, in a unique, one-off way”, says Brighton Festival Chief Executive Lucy Davies. “It will be an event – something you would not experience in a standard classical music programme. We aim for a programme that excites and intrigues audiences, connecting as well as surprising, and young musicians are always central to our approach.”
“Brighton Festival has worked with the Britten Sinfonia for many years,” says Gill Kay, Classical Music Programmer and Producer for the Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival, they are some of the finest chamber players in the country so perfect for this more unusual project. The Festival has an ongoing relationship with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. William’s young artists programme Le Jardin des Voix auditions singers from all over the world and so many of our chosen soloists here will not have been heard in the UK before. What a great opportunity to introduce them to Brighton! The young singers were together in Paris recently and created a real buzz there about our Brighton project!”
The St John Passion was originally written for a church congregation, but we will be presenting it in the Brighton Dome Concert Hall to make it feel accessible to both Christians and non-Christians. “The word that came up in our discussions was hope: very much a message for our current times,” says Gill. “We’ll be performing in the round, so many of the audience will be close to the action no matter where they are sitting.”
To enhance the feeling of inclusion, the audience will be encouraged to join in some of the chorales as part of the performance, helping them to feel a part of our story”, says Gill. “Local choirs are attending, so even those in the audience not actually singing will have the sound coming from all around them so will become more than just observers.”
Harnessing the power of scripture
Lucy Davies previously collaborated with Owen Sheers and Michael Sheen on The Passion of Port Talbot, a secular Passion that told a contemporary story of the underdog’s battle against power, his capacity to unite and inspire, his punishment by those unjust powers, and then the restoration of collective memory, justice and place. “Working on that project was one of the privileges of my career; I remember so many moments and experiences from it,” says Lucy. “The Passion is the ultimate story of trauma and redemption – to travel from a humiliating, cruel and agonising death to the dream of resurrection and hope.”
At one of the BFC’s rehearsals, we had the good fortune to have the Reverend Richard Coles step forward from his spot in the first basses to discuss the St John Passion’s biblical context.
“Passion to us today means an excited feeling, I guess”, says Richard. “We are passionate about politics, or handbags or, according to one strapline I saw recently, passionate about parking. But passio, in Latin, means suffering. Passion in Christian tradition refers to the culminating events of Jesus’ earthly life, what he suffered on the way to the cross. I think the Passion takes us to the heart of the Christian message: that God became a man and gave himself up in order to restore us.”
“John was a marvellous writer of koinē Greek, the common language of his time and place. The Jesus he portrays is the God Man, foretold by the Hebrew Scriptures, but expressed in Greek thought for a literate Jewish readership. His language is deceptively plain and simple, but that allows him to explore profound themes. As CS Lewis, paraphrasing Gregory the Great, once said: St John’s Gospel is both a stream in which children may paddle, and a river in which elephants may swim.”
Interpreting a masterwork
Bach’s setting of St John’s tense tale of foreboding, cowardice and courage is a masterpiece, with strikingly vivid musical storytelling.
Musical Director James Morgan first performed the work as a young treble at Westminster Cathedral, and first conducted it at university. “Every time I conduct the St John Passion, I’m struck by the immediacy of the drama – almost operatic in its intention – when compared to Bach’s more reflective St Matthew Passion,” says James. “The two great choruses that bookend the piece are, in my opinion, among the greatest choral works ever written.”
When it was first performed, at a Good Friday service 302 years ago, the St John Passion ruffled feathers. Its strong characters and powerful themes still challenge and resonate with audiences today.
“The audience might be relieved to hear that there won’t be a sermon in the middle in our performance,” says James. “Another key difference is our decision to have the Chorus sing the work from memory, in English. We wanted to communicate the story in as visceral a way as possible.”
“By doing so, during rehearsals, we have ourselves been confronted by the more uncomfortable aspects of St John’s Gospel, which refers directly to ‘the Jews’ on a number of occasions. This reflects the fact that John’s followers were themselves being expelled from synagogues and persecuted at the time this gospel was written in the AD90s.”
“There is no escaping that the text has historically been misappropriated as an excuse for anti-Semitism. However, Bach’s overarching vision for the Passion was the Lutheran premise that it is the sinfulness of all humankind that made the death of Jesus necessary. It is the choruses and the chorales that carry this vision that make the work so important, and it’s testament to Bach’s genius that the St John Passion is still so widely performed today.”
Brighton Festival Chorus perform Bach, St. John Passion, semi-staged with the Britten Sinfonia and young soloists from Les Arts Florissants, on Monday 4 May 2026 at 7.30pm in Brighton Dome as part of Brighton Festival 2026. Tickets start at £10 for Proms standing and are available from brightonfestival.org.