The Bach Choir’s Palm Sunday performance of their namesake’s St Matthew Passion is a London tradition dating to the 1930s. Its heyday was under the late Sir David Willcocks in whose cherished memory the present performance, the first since his death, was given. Thirty years ago there was enough audience to fill the 2,000-seat hall on the previous Sunday too. Here there were empty seats at the start, only some of which belonged to the late arrivals entering guiltily after the opening chorus and missing the chance to settle to the flowing rhythm of the Florilegium ensemble or bathe ears in the choir’s fresh opulence. The performers formed a living altarpiece before us, the hosts in black enclosing the white-bloused ripieno chorus, formed solely for this annual rendition from girls at 15 London schools. They pinged out the steady crotchets of the chorale tune like bells above the senior ensemble’s irresistible invitation, “Come ye daughters”.