The English Concert & Choir / Pinnock, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Is 'authentic' still believable?

Bach's 'Christmas Oratorio' (BWV 248) is a curious hybrid: a Passion-style retelling of the Nativity story to music largely adapted from secular pieces he had composed in praise of the Dresden royal family, laid out in six cantatas to be performed on six separate feast days after Christmas in two different churches. Nonetheless, his inveterate compulsion to grip disparate materials together in unified compilations ensures an overall key-structure and unity of mood strong enough to justify a straight-through performance – even if he never envisaged one.

Why then, as Trevor Pinnock – in his final season with The English Concert he founded 30 years ago – briskly propelled his 22-voice choir and 30-odd period instrument band into the opening of Part 1, was the impact somehow less than one had hoped – in spite of the pounding drums, aspiring fanfares, cascading strings and joyous shouts? Why, as the Choir cantered through the "Glory be to God" chorus at the climax of Part 2, did one feel that textural ingenuities and expressive nuances were being skated over? "We hear what we believe; we cannot know that is what they heard," the medievalist Daniel Leech-Wilkinson has written recently. Could it be that our ears no longer quite believe in the zippy speeds and pert articulation that have passed for "authenticity" in recent decades?

As Pinnock's performers warmed up, that question moved into abeyance at least for the rest of this performance. Already in Part 1, John Mark Ainsley as the Evangelist had negotiated Bach's mercilessly florid roulades in the "Joyful shepherds, haste, o haste" aria with insoucient virtuosity and proved tirelessly eloquent throughout. The alto Catherine Denley, standing at the last moment for an indisposed Diana Moore, started carefully but gave her later numbers with warmth and dignity. That silvery Scottish soprano Lisa Milne came into her own in her plangent Part 4 aria with oboe obligato, in which she questions the Saviour in the form of an off-stage echo.The German baritone Christian Gerhaher seemed light-voiced for the stentorian Part 1 aria with trumpet obligato but soon proved vigorous and expressive; and the pungent double reeds of The English Concert sounded quite delectible in the pastoral sinfonia to Part 2.

At the end of the three-hour performance, a capacity audience went out manifestly well pleased. But not until nearly 11pm – which was no fun for those facing a long, cold journey out into the sticks. What is so sacred about the Queen Elizabeth Hall's inveterate starting time of 7.45? Here surely a beginning half an hour earlier would have been welcomed all round.