‘Two new CD releases from Ex Cathedra help us celebrate this expert chamber choir’s 40th anniversary season, and one of these is of immense importance. This is the performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion which Ex Cathedra gave at Symphony Hall on Good Friday afternoon this year, sung in a new “contemporary” English translation by Nicholas Fisher and John Russell. The immediacy of the text is matched by the confiding intimacy of vocal projection under Jeffrey Skidmore’s direction… Eamonn Dougan is quietly dignified as Jesus, and Jeremy Budd is the engaging Evangelist. The Ex Cathedra Baroque Orchestra plays with style and clarity, sprung from a light bass-line, and it is particularly gratifying to have the viola da gamba obbligati delivered with such verve and panache by Richard Campbell: a far cry from the purgatorial interminabilities of these movements in decades long gone.’ (Birmingham Post)