Classical music – like every art – has its fashions. And when, back in 1993, Jonathan Miller took the unorthodox step of staging Bach’s St Matthew Passion, he started a trend. Sober and spiritual it may have been, but his production in Holy Trinity Sloane Square (revived earlier this year at the National Theatre) placed a sacred work within the secular grasp of the theatre. Where Miller led Deborah Warner’s St John Passion followed, as well of course as Katie Mitchell’s controversial post-massacre St Matthew for Glyndebourne. Last week, in the subterranean bunker that is the University of Westminster’s Ambika P3 space, Bach’s oratorio donned its latest costume.
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