He established regular performances of the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor from 1931 until shortly before his death in 1965, attracting listeners from the Netherlands and abroad.

[3][5] In contrast Willem Mengelberg conducted a shortened version of the St Matthew Passion regularly on Palm Sunday in the Concertgebouw, taking a romantic approach with choirs of 450 singers.

The Bach Society performs about 50 concerts a year, concentrating on works of Bach and his family, his contemporaries and predecessors, such as Buxtehude, Carissimi, Charpentier, Grandi, Handel, De Koninck, Kuhnau, Mazzocchi, Monteverdi, Padbrué, Ritter, Scheidt, Schein, Schütz, Sweelinck, Telemann and Weckmann.

Guest conductors have included Gustav Leonhardt, Paul McCreesh, Philippe Herreweghe, Frans Brüggen, Iván Fischer and Masaaki Suzuki.

In guest lessons, rehearsals, an interactive CD-Rom and a website, the students are prepared to listen to the concert while understanding its components and meaning.

The ensemble recorded, among others, in 1998 Bach's St Matthew Passion, conducted by Jos van Veldhoven, with Gerd Türk as the Evangelist, Geert Smits as Vox Christi, Johannette Zomer, Andreas Scholl, Hans Jörg Mammel and Peter Kooy,[7] released on Channel Classics Records.