Three hundred years after the premiere of the St Matthew Passion, the Palau de la Música Catalana marks the anniversary with three very different perspectives on Bach’s masterpiece: Simon Rattle’s interpretation, Teodor Currentzis’s more unpredictable approach, and this historically informed reading by Václav Luks. A specialist in this repertoire and a representative of a new generation of conductors who have inherited the interpretative renewal initiated by figures such as Harnoncourt, Luks comes to the Palau with Collegium 1704 to offer a performance attentive to the language, sound world and interpretative principles of Bach’s time.

Premiered in Leipzig in 1727, the St Matthew Passion thus celebrates three centuries of an extraordinary history. After falling into obscurity, its revival by Felix Mendelssohn in the nineteenth century proved decisive in bringing it back to the concert stage and contributing to the rediscovery of Bach’s music. With Luks and Collegium 1704, the circle is completed by returning to the score from the perspective of historically informed performance.