For their annual Easter project, Roland Peelman and the Song Company have so far managed to avoid a performance of an actual ‘passion’ per se, preferring to come at the central message from a number of oblique, yet imaginative directions – Tenebrae chants, a Via Crucis etc. This year though they have decided to bite the bullet, and to say that they hit the nail on the head would be an understatement. This was a remarkable experience.

Peelman’s program comes at it from two different angles, roughly 400 years apart. First we have a St John Passion from Christoph Demantius, a rather obscure Lutheran composer, predating Schütz by about 20 years. A fully polyphonic, six-part a cappella work, Demantius Passion was preceded appropriately by one of his motets.

Both works were given first rate performances by the three men and three women of the Song Company, Peelman alert to every nuance and shaping each phrase with loving attention. The blend was exceptional with a terrific sense of the organic ebb and flow of the piece. The acoustic of St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt was ideal – resonant yet not so much so that anything ever got muddied or lost.

Demantius’ style owes a...