Orchestra Seattle / Seattle Chamber Singers will be performing The Passion According to St. Matthew by J. S. Bach at Benaroya Hall on Good Friday, April 9. "One of the landmarks of western culture, Bach's monumental meditation on Christ's suffering employs the combined forces of six soloists, three choirs, two orchestras and Benaroya Hall's mighty Watjen concert organ." BachFAQ.org has an entry about the work.
BachFAQ.org is a beautifully written and informative FAQ that originated from the alt.music.j-s-bach newsgroup.
JSBach.org includes biographical information, a cross-index of J. S. Bach's complete works, and a nice list of recordings. Via the recording list: An Amazon.com customer review (on this not-so-favored recording of BWV 244) recommends the Hanssler/Bachakademie edition of the St. Matthew Passion conducted by Helmuth Rilling (Amazon link).
Blah. Not Rilling.
I'd have four recommendations, depending on what kind of sound you want. Paul McCreesh's with the Gabrieli Consort on DG Archiv is one-to-a-part, following the Parrott/Rifkin performance practice theory, my preferred method of Bach performance (though I don't yet own this St. Matthew, but I've heard it). Herreweghe's on Harmonia Mundi is a good period-performance version with larger forces (vastly preferred to Gardiner's). Karl Richter's 1958 recording on DG Archiv is wonderful and old school, as is Klemperer's on EMI (though they are as different as you can get). As far as old school, I do like Richter (his B-Minor Mass from 1961 [not 1969] is amazing).