From the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy – James MacMillan conducts music of suffering and solace for our Easter Festival.

Bach’s gorgeous motet Komm, Jesu, komm imagines a moment of peaceful union between the human and the divine. 

Wagner’s final opera Parsifal tells the story of an Arthurian knight’s spiritual quest for the holy grail. The ‘Good Friday Music’, depicting an exhausted Parsifal resting in a sunny meadow, is peaceful yet always evolving, building and renewing. 

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter Overture captures the wonder of the ‘bright holiday’. A musical marriage of Christian and folk traditions, it depicts nature’s reawakening after the darkness of winter, transitioning from doom and gloom to unbridled celebration. 

Closing this special evening, and conducted by the composer, Sir James MacMillan’s deeply moving Seven Last Words from the Cross is a revelatory expression of faith.  

 

 

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