I had a question pertaining to one of my old questions music.stackexchange.com/questions/133526/…. Why do people bring up stressed and unstressed syllables when it comes to setting the durations of the lyrics? Don't we have control over where we choose to stress or not stress syllables? (as hinted at in many of the answers)
> A little googling led me to find one answer courtesy of reddit: a piano transcription by Selmar Baggae. One brave soul performed the whole thing in this YouTube playlist. Although not a professional recording, I think it's very good.
When I was still a church organist it's my yearly tradition to play a pipe organ transcription of the closing final chorale + orchestra, Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder, as a postlude for the Good Friday service.
I see that you are looking for an orchestral transcription for the voice parts, I didn't have time to look further. Maybe someone made that arrangement for a few arias / chorus but not the whole thing like what Selmar Baggae did for piano. Being an organist, I would be happy if someone does it for the pipe organ, because the organ has a large range of voices to be used to replace the voices.
Having said that, you would lose much meaning not knowing the meaning of the words while listening to St. Matthew Passion, because Bach does some "word painting" in the music and lots of symbolism. It is first and foremost sacred Christian music.
