It was Good Friday 1724 when the St John Passion first rang out. Almost 300 years later Bach’s masterpiece, conducted by Andreas Spering, a specialist in period sound, begins the Grafenegg Spring. Originally intended for liturgical use, it is the concert version of Bach’s first great work that has made its way so triumphantly around the globe. This development was probably also helped by the fact that Bach heeded the instruction of his Leipzig patron not to compose “too operatically” in his own quite special way: he supplemented the traditional Passion story, along with thematically appropriate chorales, with a number of expressive arias with religious texts. These pearls of the concert repertoire offer the outstanding soloists in Grafenegg a range of opportunities to make their creative mark.