Performer: Carlos Mena

Accomplished performances from the cast and La Cetra Baroque Orchestra can’t fully compensate the shortcomings of Caldara’s Harmony of the Planets.

Andrea Marcon leads La Cetra Baroque Orchestra and a group of accomplished soloists in an elegant and sensuous performance of Vivaldi's pastoral opera at the Concertgebouw.

Admittedly, it has been quite some time since I heard a St Matthew Passion in a concert hall as opposed to a church. The Concert Hall of the Danish Radio in Copenhagen is an impressive building both inside and out; it was well-filled and buzzing with excitement for a passion featuring the radio orchestra, choir as well as young and attractive international soloists.

The Lautten Compagney performed Handel's Rinaldo at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw enjoyably, though without sweeping the audience off its feet.

Joshua Rifkin’s theory that Bach had no ‘choir’ in the modern sense may have gradually inched its way towards acceptance, but for all the heated discussion his research has generated, one-per-part Passions are rarer than one might suppose.