Sigiswald Kuijken knows the St. Matthew Passion through and through. With La Petite Bande he gave performances of the work all over the world. Twenty...

Sigiswald Kuijken knows the St. Matthew Passion through and through. With La Petite Bande he gave performances of the work all over the world. Twenty years ago La Petite Bande (at that time with conductor Gustav Leonhardt and Kuijken as concertmaster) made their first recording of the Passion. It was a recording with soloists, a chamber choir and an orchestral composition which was adjusted to that. Since then Kuijken's vision on this masterpiece has changed very much. Ground-breaking musicological work of the last decades has brought him to a serious thin-out of his ensemble without the use of a conductor. There is not a real choir anymore, because the soloists perform also the choir parts. The boys' choir that is usually used in most performances of this Passion is replaced here by a single soprano voice. Additionally, by using authentic instruments and the original way of playing them, both in interpretation and sound quality, La Petite Bande strives to revive baroque music as faithfully as possible without lapsing into rigid academics.