We have Bella Salomon to thank for the latest concert in the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs season, for when she gave her 15-year-old grandson Felix Mendelssohn a copy of the score of JS Bach’s St Matthew Passion as a birthday present it changed the course of musical history.

Seven years later he created a performing edition from parts used by Bach himself, cutting it in half, and organised and conducted two performances in 1829.

Mendelssohn further revised the score for a performance at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1841 – where it had first been performed by Bach in 1727 – including restoring arias he had previously cut. It still lasted two hours, as opposed to up to three hours in Bach’s original.

Without those performances, and the young composer’s championing of other of the old master’s works that had been neglected for a century, the world might never have fully known Bach’s true genius.

Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra. Photo © Keith Saunders

With the Philharmonia’s Chamber and VOX choirs being joined by the Australian Romantic & Classical Orchestra (ARCO) for this one-off concert under Associate Music Director Elizabeth Scott,...