Thirty years after he founded his groundbreaking Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki seems to have aged barely a day, yet his performances with them don’t stand still. Sometimes this ensemble’s approach can be measured and understated; however, this performance of Bach’s St John Passion was underpinned throughout by a sense of heated and tightly plotted drama.

That feeling was established in the opening chorus, the strings launching their roiling accompaniment with real bite, the two twin oboes keening above. You don’t often hear a contrabassoon in a period-instrument band, but here there was one to provide a suggestion of shaking floorboards on the lowest bass notes. More than instrumental colour, though, the dramatic sense came from the urgent pace set by Suzuki as conductor. The chorales, which can seem to press pause on the action, seemed in this performance more like brief but important asides.

Christian Immler’s velvet-toned Jesus had a bit of edge – was it wrong for him to hint at anger? Surely not in this context. Hana Blažíková, Damien Guillon and Zachary Wilder, stepping out from the choir to sing the arias, had voices that were compact and smooth yet firm. Choir members brought actorly poise to the one-liner cameos; the bass Yusuke Watanabe was impressive as Peter and, especially, as Pilate, helping to pile on the tension in the court scene as the dialogue pushed ever onwards.

At the centre of it all, figuratively and literally, was tenor James Gilchrist as the narrating Evangelist, sweet-sounding yet compellingly direct as both storyteller and preacher – one with his feet on the ground, not in the pulpit.