Next month, conductor Roger Norrington will stage a recreation of Felix Mendelssohn’s famous 1829 performance of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, which many scholars consider to have been the catalyst for the widespread 19th-century revival of Bach’s music. But fans of the famous choral work may be shocked by what they hear: “Huge numbers of the meditative arias and chorales have gone. The story line is there, but I suppose [Mendelssohn] thought people just couldn’t handle four hours, three-and-a-half hours, or whatever it is.”