THE St Matthew Passion and Mass in B minor held special significance for Wood among Bach's choral works. Although he presented them with various choral societies throughout his life, his first performances of each at the Sheffield Musical Festival were particularly noteworthy. These interpretations infused and informed all his subsequent performances.

THE SHEFFIELD MUSICAL FESTIVAL

Long established as one of Britain's major centres of steel cutlery production, Sheffield enjoyed a vibrant music scene attracting the finest instrumentalists and vocalists from surrounding areas. The triennial Sheffield Musical Festival, inaugurated in 1896 (three years after Sheffield gained city charter status), was a relatively late addition to the calendar of major civic festivals. The appointment of August Manns, conductor of London's Crystal Palace concerts, and Henry Coward, a local, former cutlery apprentice who had become a critically renowned virtuoso choral trainer, brought immediate distinction to proceedings. The two-day festival, initially held in October, expanded to three days in 1899, with morning and evening concerts taking place in Sheffield's Albert Hall. On Manns's retirement in 1902, Henry Wood joined the chorus master Henry Coward to take the festival into the new century. The programme had always been a gargantuan feast of works; in just two days the 1896 festival had presented no fewer than ten substantial works including Mendelssohn's Elijah, Sullivan's Golden Legend, Berlioz's Damnation of Faust, Parry's Job, and Beethoven's ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, and 1902 was no exception. It was common for composers to conduct their own premieres, so audiences were treated to Elgar, Parry, and Coleridge-Taylor on the rostrum. But alongside the premieres of Elgar's Coronation March (Edward VII's coronation had been delayed owing to his illness, so it was premiered here instead) and Coward's own Gareth and Linet, Wood began to programme Bach, beginning with the motet Jesu meine Freude. That year, the ‘Steelopolis’ was acclaimed as ‘in the forefront of Musical Festivals’, the Sheffield Chorus as ‘unrivalled’ (after sixty-one rehearsals), Dr Henry Coward as ‘the master chorus-master’, and Sir Henry Wood as ‘a successful Festival Conductor’.