THROUGHOUT his career Wood remained faithful to his youthful reflections on Bach, which resulted in performances – especially of the vocal works – that were driven above all by his response to the expression in the music. When, in 1908, The Globe concluded that ‘Mr Wood's individuality was impressed on every bar of the music’, it aptly captured his careful micro-managing of detail. His emotional and occasionally experimental interpretations of the Passions and Mass in B minor drew a mixed reception (as was seen in Chapter 10), but the critics also give a clear sense that Wood's reading was considered an alternative rather than a definitive interpretation. For example, a review of the Bach Choir's performance of the St Matthew Passion on 5 March 1927 under Ralph Vaughan Williams shows a contemporary fascination with contrasting the variety of ways in which the work was performed. Whereas Wood's brisk tempos, especially for choruses, ‘increased the pace of the action’, the critic wrote, the ‘more deliberate approach’ taken by Vaughan Williams with the Bach Choir brought out the ‘nuances of the scenes’. This was typical of Vaughan Williams's style, one that he continued at his Leith Hill Festivals, and also built on a tradition of weightier readings that had evolved at the Bach Choir under the earlier directorship of Charles Villiers Stanford, Henry Walford Davies, and Hugh Allen.