The Great Passion, as St. Matthew Passion is known, has been hailed as the greatest setting of the Passion story in western music. Within Bach's life time the performance of a setting of a Passion story on Good Friday was the highlight of a musical year in Leipzig.  St. Matthew Passion was so called 'the Great Passion' in order to distinguish it from the four other Passions that CPE Bach ascribed to his father in the Obituary he wrote with Johann Friedrich Agricola.  The first large-scale vocal work Bach composed for Leipzig after his appointment as Thomaskantor in 1723 was St. John Passion, which was followed in 1727 by St Matthew's, a setting of St. Matthew's Gospel for double chorus.  Four years later came the St. Mark Passion, for which the music had regrettably been lost.  These large-scale Passions were performed at Vespers on Good Friday and far surpassed anything previously heard in Leipzig.  Despite his predecessor, Johann Kuhnau, having composed an oratario Passion based on St. Mark's Gospel also for the performance at Vespers on Good Friday back in 1721, Bach had set new standards for his Great Passion both in terms of scale and conception.  

This version from Teldec is performed by Concentus musicus Wien with Nikolaus Harnoncourt being the conductor together with Arnold Schoenberg Chor and Wiener Sängerknaben.