That I don’t remember. But take the St. John Passion. There you also have four concertists, who as usual sing everything, and another quartet added to the chorales and turbae choruses. We’re going to do it like this next year, with eight singers. I think it will produce a very beautiful effect. It reminds you of the Bach motets with double choir or the double choruses in the St. Matthew Passion, where every so often the two choirs join forces.

It is interesting that, as Parrott noted, the vocal forces required for the two passions are the same, eight singers. And that’s because extra singers were available on Good Friday, when there were no singers required in the other churches.

Yes, except that the St. Matthew Passion also has the extra ripienist normally called the boys choir. We’ve just done it like this, and without a conductor. I did the whole thing from the leader’s desk. It was a fantastic experience and everybody was very happy with it, because it became something quite different.

A rather strange CD of extracts from a performance of the Mass in B minor you gave in Mexico, part of a worldwide tour in the “Bach Year” of 2000, has recently been issued [Urtext JBCC 0050]. I was struck by your comments in the accompanying notes to the effect that you viewed this performance as “work in progress”. This seemed to me to display considerable humility from a musician of your experience.

Yes, it was a rather stressful experience. We’d had a singer drop out and various changes, so it was not possible to issue the whole recording. It’s not good enough and I rather regret doing it. And we had a trumpet problem in that I’ve always been fanatical about doing things the way they were done in their day. If they could do it, so can we. Up until now most Baroque trumpeters (and even some horn players) have been helped by using an instrument that compromises by having holes added to secure the production of some overtones. For these performances we had true Bach trumpets without holes, made by our trumpeter Graham Nicholson and employing players brave enough to experiment. In the B-minor Mass the trumpet parts are horribly difficult. It is obvious that in an experimental age you cannot produce the finished product of mature playing. Things are now changing and playing without holes is progressing rapidly. I don’t blame players for having used the easier instruments, but ultimately we have to move on. So that was what we did in the B-minor Mass performances, which represented a reckless kind of attitude on my part. That at least partly explains why I described the performance as ‘work in progress’; if I was the doing the piece when I was 99-years old it would still be work in progress!

Well, that leads to the question of what you feel you learned from that tour of the Mass in B minor, which I believe you gave about 20 times.

We learned a great deal. The performance was very much better at the end of the tour. As I’ve said it was a reckless undertaking, because I introduced one-part-part choruses, trumpets without holes and directing from the first desk of the violins all at once. So one can’t be too surprised that initially it had some weak points. But by the end some things were very good and doing the work so many times offered a marvellous opportunity to experiment. Of course we had people saying that because there was no chorus they did not like the balance. We have to remember that Bach had his singers in a gallery with the organ, standing and singing right out into the church with the instrumentalists sitting or standing behind them. It was therefore all very different and acoustically they had a much greater chance to project. I always place the concertino singers in front of the orchestra.

And of course by using only one-singer-per-part you are challenging the singers a great deal more.

Absolutely, and it’s interesting that the traditional kind of soloist are in most instances not apt for this kind of performance. Some are simply not interested, but even when they are it is simply not their world. You have to find new people who are happy to experiment and try this style of performance.

Do you find that it is a strain for solo singers to sustain their parts in a big work like the St. Matthew Passion or the Mass in B minor?

Before they do it, they tend to think it is going to be very tiring, but then after the first performance they think they are in paradise! They keep singing and remain so involved. And, of course, they have pauses during the other singers’ arias. So its not as if they are singing all evening, just as they are not in opera. They also have to drop the idea of singing a big solo role, to change their disposition. If they can’t then they should not be doing it. From the start everybody involved has to change his or her perspective.

I think we’ve reached a point where we should be bringing our conversation to an end, and perhaps we could do so by having your brief thoughts as to where Bach interpretation goes now from the point it has reached.

There is a kind of evolution in progress at present. There are those who still tend to concentrate on producing a kind of brilliant show that people will clap. OK, let them. Why not? They will do the Matthew Passion and they will do Messiah. But I think that is not interesting. Then there are others, perhaps crazy people like me, who will try to concentrate on inner things. What does that mean? I don’t know, but I feel that when I say that it does mean something, even if I can’t exactly explain it. What is the essence of beauty? It’s not so-called historical authenticity. That might be part of it, but it’s not a guarantee. The most important thing for me is to make the deepest contact I can with Bach’s art, to try to penetrate that richer world that was his. That certainly is something that appeals to all of us.