It is exactly 50 years since the St Matthew Passion was heard complete for the first time in this country. That performance, given by the London Bach Society and conducted by Paul Steinitz, finally restored all the cuts that had been standard practice in the score since Mendelssohn revived it in 1829, a century after Bach completed it for his Easter services in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.

Although the version conducted by Paul McCreesh at St John's on Tuesday was musically complete, it was light years away from the score that Steinitz would have prepared. The use of period instruments was one major difference, of course, but that is standard practice for serious Bach these days. More controversially, there were only eight singers on stage, each at once a soloist in this work for double choir and double orchestra, and a member of the chorus.

There is plenty of musicological evidence for such economy of means, and the St John's performance showed that slender resources bring gains in transparency and precision, and a more immediate sense of theatre as the soloists come together to provide the choral commentary and interjections. But against that is the missing weight of tone a larger body of singers can lend to some of the choruses, and to the chorales (which in Bach's time would also have been sung by the congregation). In this performance they were less the great pillars on which the whole musical edifice was supported, than brief, almost intimate declarations of belief punctuating the ritualised drama.

Here the singers on which so much rested were a top-drawer octet. Having Mark Padmore as the Evangelist (who also sang the first tenor's arias) was the best possible starting point; his eloquence and expressiveness are peerless in this music at present. Peter Harvey's Christus matched him in the grave beauty of his singing. Magdalena Kozena was one of the altos, producing ravishing sounds but not much in the way of verbal communication; Susan Bickley, in her single aria, showed her colleague the way it could be done. Both sopranos, Joanne Lunn and Julia Gooding, were refined and agile, while James Gilchrist as the second tenor and Stephan Loges as second bass made their smaller contributions count, too.

McCreesh carefully alternated precise control of the larger ensembles with arias in which he let his singers and instrumentalists lead the way, giving the performance an impressive ebb and flow. It just lacked that extra degree of grandeur when it seemed to be needed.

· Further performance at Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Snape (01728 687110), March 31.