As Easter eggs often go on sale the minute the Christmas decorations come down, the anticipation of this seasonal celebration can quickly fade into the background, so that it later creeps up on us, especially if you’re not a churchgoer. An evening of liturgical music was therefore a surprising reminder that Easter, and thus Spring, is well and truly on the way. I did not expect a freezing evening in March to be the moment I first looked optimistically towards the season of new life, especially not in a draughty church, but Luceat’s lively, moving performance of Bach’s St John Passion ensured the audience did just that.

Luceat’s mission is to bring liturgical music to appropriate settings: as a choral performance in a church, this was not a sermon, but somewhere between an opera and a carol concert. Aforementioned chill aside, the evening provided a feast for the senses: we arrived to a pleasant but not overpowering aroma of recently-burned incense, and over the course of the evening we were treated to note-perfect music in a beautiful setting. Our venue, the gorgeous Pusey House Chapel, was the perfect size: large enough to accommodate a decent crowd, but small enough to feel intimately connected to the music, even from the back. The brilliant acoustics meant that the space was filled with rich sounds for the full runtime, save for the occasional punctuating silence.

The Johannes Passion explores Jesus’ suffering and death by setting the Gospel of John to music. The familiar sequence of betrayal, arrest, trial and execution is interspersed with arias and ariosos reflecting on each moment’s significance, based (as Artistic Director, James Fellows, explained) on meditations by Martin Luther. These latter pieces were perhaps where Bach felt more freedom to be creative, not as strictly bound by the narrative arc, but in the more recognisable episodes, a lot of interest was generated by the choir’s characterization. Without props or costumes, the performers injected personality and intrigue to their characters. Thus, Dan Gilchrist’s Christus was infused with humility, Seb Hill captured the appropriate indignation of his Evangelist at the unjust events he narrated, and the entire ensemble inhabited the energy of the angry mob baying for blood when calling for Jesus to be crucified.

While there were of course solemn and sombre moments, and drama heightened by minor keys, what stuck with me most were the moments of hopeful and even joyful response to the idea of the salvation brought by Jesus’ sacrifice. This was exemplified by Aria S, where the interaction between the flute and vocals put me in mind of a bee or butterfly darting amongst spring flowers. The Incarnation theology behind this work emphasises the interconnectedness of life and death: for Jesus to be truly ‘the Word made flesh’, i.e. God made human, he would necessarily have to experience death, because our mortality is a fundamental facet of human nature. In this way it is fitting that a rather grim tale is a benchmark for the return of spring: the idea of decay facilitating new life is one that is not unique to Christianity but found in many religions, philosophies and worldviews, and as such could provide a message of hope for many.