Templar Great Classics: A Baroque Easter

Conductor: Sofi Jeannin
Singers include: Sally-Anne Russell, Henry Choo, James Ioelu
Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir
Director: Karen Grylls

Arias and choruses from:
- Handel: Messiah
- J.S. Bach: Easter Oratorio
- J.S. Bach: St John Passion
- J.S. Bach: St Matthew Passion

Handel’s Messiah is always played in December, but liturgically this is quite wrong. The familiar Christmas music is a prelude to Handel’s main concern, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. It is an Easter piece, then, and so too are Bach’s two Passions and his Easter Oratorio.

Sofi Jeannin, the new Chief Conductor of the prestigious BBC Singers, has devised an imaginative programme telling the Easter story using all four of these towering pieces, including the ever-popular Hallelujah Chorus. With an exceptional cast of singers and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir it promises to be profoundly moving on a spiritual level and sublime on a musical one, just in time for Easter.