Note to conductors: the Matthew Passion is not a pot roast. Fling even the best ingredients in and you won't get a hearty casserole, you'll get indigestion. And, for all the diligence of Mark Elder's Bach on a wet Maundy Thursday in Manchester, this performance had me reaching for the antacids.

Let's start with the good. Elder and the Hallé brought a searching beauty to Bach's score. This was a reading alive to the yearning, mystery and, of course, tragedy of the Crucifixion, flickering through quivering string accompaniments and the pungent sighs of oboe and cor anglais. Heard on its own terms, it worked. And I was startled by the focus of the Hallé Choir, who turned up in large enough forces to invade a small country but never drowned the storytelling or smothered the musical lines.

So why didn't Elder have the courage of his convictions? What could have been a richly detailed, big-boned and urgently dramatic reading sagged badly at the edges. The all-important opening chorus felt laboured, not arresting. Timothy Robinson's strained and unsteady Evangelist was led at a calm walking pace through most of his narration, which needed much more snap from the beginning. Throughout, it seemed as if a devotional brake was being applied to a meatier style that neither suited nor needed it.

That's the enigma, of course, at the heart of the Matthew Passion. By definition, it's an occasion piece, yet one that historically would have been performed (and received) with an instinctive fidelity. In the 21st-century concert hall, you have to find a different and, most of all, unified way of wrapping up its diverse demands.

Only one performer stayed resolutely on message - and really made the most of singing in English. That was the mezzo Alice Coote, rooted to her score but completely inside the material - and able to let it sing out in unashamedly operatic language. But, while two weeks ago Carolyn Sampson's pellucid soprano had shone out of the Bach Choir's Passion performance, here it sounded weak next to the thicker orchestral textures of the Hallé. Darren Jeffery's Jesus was stolid and unimaginative; Neal Davies's bass and Nicholas Watts's tenor capable but uninspiring. If this really is the Greatest Story Ever Told, then too few at this performance knew it.

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