When Sir Colin Davis was asked by the LSO to select a composer to write a new work for his 80th birthday he chose James MacMillan, whose works he had conducted regularly over recent years. Sir Colin must be delighted with his present; what apparently started out as a proposal for a twenty-minute work has resulted in a large-scale, dramatically profound setting of St John’s Passion text lasting ninety minutes. It is scored for one principal soloist (Christus), chamber choir, large chorus and orchestra. The role of Christus is taken by a baritone, the narration is rovided by the chamber choir, while the large chorus takes all the other text, including the characterisation of the other main players in the drama. The work itself is divided into ten movements, into nine of which MacMillan has interpolated a Latin text offering the opportunity to reflect on the story, in the same way as Bach uses chorales in his Passion settings. The tenth movement is purely instrumental, with keening woodwind underpinned by a Scottish-sounding lament. This Passion is a master-piece: the variety and colour of the orchestration and the dramatic use of the large chorus give the work immediate impact. But it is the plain-chant-inspired writing for the narrator chorus with its simple but often piquant harmonies that draws the work into a magnificent unified whole. Baritone Christopher Maltman declaims the lines of Christus with searing bitterness. All Passion settings will inevitably be measured against those of Bach; this one loses nothing in the comparison.

Reviewed by Anne McAlister