Lent usually means Bach Passions and this year York is due to enjoy three. The university was first into the fray, with the St John on Wednesday, conducted from the harpsichord by Peter Seymour. It was an evening to savour.

Charles Daniels delivered as finely nuanced an Evangelist as you could hope for, in immaculately projected German and fully alive to the drama. Peter’s shiver at the fireside, and the pregnant pause when Jesus failed to answer Pilate, were among many felicitous moments.

Stephen Varcoe fashioned a flesh-and-blood Christus but also one imbued with gravitas. Together they made great theatre. If only Christopher Oates’s otherwise efficient Pilate could have used his copy less.

Underpinning everything was a University Baroque Ensemble on top form, its phrasing delightfully shaped. Outstanding among several first-class soloists were Ian Hoggart’s bassoon and Sam Stadlen’s viola da gamba. The continuo group was precise and disciplined.

It is no easy call to step out of the choir and sing an occasional aria. All the soloists responded well to the challenge, the best making eye contact with their audience.

These included Benedict Williams, firm but calm in all three bass arias, Hannah Johnstone’s appealing contralto in It Is Finished, and Eleanor Thompson’s nicely controlled soprano.

The choir was alert and forthright, finding the right kind of aggression during Jesus’s trial, but something smoother for the (mainly swift) chorales and the choruses that frame the work.

Two points of etiquette: soloists should not return to their seats before the orchestra has completed their aria; still less should choral members sip from plastic bottles during solo numbers. But these could not eclipse a memorable performance of which the university may feel proud. Martin Dreyer