Strictly no applause until the very end. A long, long hush when Jesus dies on the Cross. And picnics with folding camping chairs in the Festival Hall foyers during the two-hour lunch interval between betrayal and Crucifixion. This is the Bach Choir at Easter, and it's a distinctly curious experience for the uninitiated.

The time is long past to lambast this 132-year-old choir for not keeping up with the present day. To David Hill's credit, he brought this performance to a close in under three hours, banishing all thoughts of Romantic excess in doing so. A beefed-up Florilegium offered supple strings in large enough forces to contend with the voices, but with a convincing period style to boot.

And yet the more boxes the Bach Choir try to tick, the more of a hotch-potch their St Matthew Passion ultimately becomes. The quaint (yet newly commissioned) King James- infused translation, reverential silences and cushion-plush chorales spoke of a rite. The harder edges of the playing suggested a drama. And the singing drifted between the operatic (Paul Whelan's exceptionally humane Jesus), plainspeaking oratorio (the rather workmanlike Timothy Robinson and Roderick Williams) and ravishing Baroque detailing (Carolyn Sampson).

Many of these individual parts were worth the hear. Sampson in particular gave a performance of such emotional intimacy that you could forget the massed forces ranged around her, and Jane Irwin's otherwise sober mezzo-soprano suddenly turned white-hot for a tear-drenched Have Mercy, Lord (Ebarme Dich).

But a pot-luck Passion is only half the story. And ultimately it was the story that we needed more of. James Gilchrist's Evangelist, for all the mounting hysteria he brought to the second half, remained a bit-part, pushed out by a congregation who should be listening to his lead rather than shouting him down.

Perhaps we shouldn't begrudge the choir their big moment. Certainly the capacity audience didn't, bathing contendedly in their rich sound and leaving happy. The devotion was palpable; the passion of the moment more elusive.

Editor's choice

• The super cool Vampire Weekend
• Streep and Baldwin get complicated
• Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes