★★★☆☆
A Matthew Passion on Good Friday? It must be JS Bach’s great setting, of course. No, this was an intimate affair by Johann Sebastiani, who sounds like Bach’s Italian half-brother. He was in fact his own separate entity — a kapellmeister at Königsberg in eastern Prussia who died in 1683, two years before Bach was born. The Fretwork viol consort’s revival, following a streamed performance during the pandemic, held forth the hope of a refreshing novelty. In the event the pleasures were subject to some shrinkage, under pressure from the Lutheran restraint applied to Sebastiani’s imagination, and a line-up of five singers often on the pallid side themselves.
Supported by two violins and a baby organ, Richard Boothby’s viol foursome made their usual resonant
