Philip Tebb / Reseñas

Like grizzly bears returning to prowl the tundra after months of hibernation, two of Britain’s most eminent interpreters of Bach’s sacred music went head to head on Good Friday. In The Oxford corner, John Eliot Gardiner brought his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists to the Sheldonian to stream Bach’s St John Passion. In the London corner, the atmospheric Battersea Arts Centre — its walls still marked by the fire that swept through it six years ago — was the venue from where Mark Padmore and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (in co-production with Marquee TV) decided to stream . . . guess what? Bach’s St John’s Passion.