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Best concerts and opera in April and for Easter

By Claudia Pritchard on 11/3/2023

Bach tells the Easter story, two new operas and a brand-new choir features top voices

The Dead City, English National Opera

Paul is haunted by visions of his deceased wife, Marie, but then meets her double, Marietta. Composer Eric Korngold is best known for his film music, so expect drama and suspense as Paul picks his way through this mystery. Swiss tenor Rolf Romai plays Paul, with soprano Allison Oakes (pictured) singing as Marie/Marietta, and Sarah Connolly as the housekeeper in this promising new production by ENO artistic director Annilese Miskimmon, conducted by Kirill Karabits.

WHEN

Saturday 25 March to Saturday 8 April. Six performances, start times vary. Running time: 2hr 40min

WHERE

English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4ES

Easter Festival of Music, St John's Smith Square

Highlights of this annual celebration of Easter include Dvorak's Mass in D major, sung at lunchtime on Tuesday 4 April; later the Purcell Singers sing Evensong. The Hanover Band and soloists perform JS Bach's monumental St Matthew Passion. (Wednesday 5 April). Tenebrae sing music by Bach and MacMillan (Thursday 6 April). On Good Friday (7 April) the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment perform Bach's St John Passion with Nick Pritchard (pictured) as Evangelist.

WHEN

Sunday 2 to Friday 7 April. Eight events, start times vary

WHERE

St John's Smith Square, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HA

Bach's St Matthew Passion

The great retelling in music of the Easter story marks the start of Holy Week. David Hill conducts the Bach Choir and orchestra Florilegium with tenor Ed Lyon as the Evangelist, and soloists Simon Shibambu, Julia Doyle, Iestyn Davies, Nicky Spence (pictured) and Gareth Brynmor.

WHEN

Sunday 2 April, 11am–3:45pm, including two-hour lunch interval

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Reich/Richter, Royal Festival Hall

Music and visual art combine perfectly, and search restlessly for a conclusion in Reich Richter / Moving Picture (946-3). This collaboration between composer Steve Reich, artist Gerhard Richter and video artist Corinna Belz fragments and develops a Richter abstract like a perpetual kaleidoscope. Permiered at The Shed in New York in 2019, this is an unmissable event, with the London Sinfonietta, who also play new music by Anna Clyne and others. This is 'classical' musical at its coolest!

WHEN

Thursday 6 April, 7:30pm

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Bach's St John Passion, Barbican

A really dynamic account of the Easter story in Bach's sublime music told by the Britten Sinfonia and the choir of Merton College, Oxford, directed by violinist and leader Jacqueline Shave director/violin. Soloists from the exciting new generation of singers include soprano Rachel Redmond (pictured), mezzo-soprano Anita Monserrat, and tenor Anthony Gregory, with tenor Gwilym Bowen as the Evangelist and James Atkinson as Christus. Enthralling and very beautiful.

WHEN

Friday 7 April, 6pm (note early start)

WHERE

Barbican Hall, Silk Street, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS

Verdi's Requiem, Royal Festival Hall

With its dramatic and recurring Dies Irae chorus, Verdi's operatic Requiem is a great favourite with audiences. For this Eastertide performance, the London Mozart Players under Dan Ludford-Thomas are joined by Philippa Boyle (soprano) Martha McLorinan (mezzo-soprano), Oliver Johnston (tenor), Thomas Humphreys (bass) and leading London choirs, Lewisham Choral Society and the Hackney Singers.

WHEN

Wednesday 12 April, 7:30pm

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Vox Urbane debut

Exaudi, Polyphony, the King’s Consort, Ex Cathedra, I Fagiolini and The Sixteen are among the finest vocal ensembles in the country. Members from each combine their skills in a brand-new outfit, Vox Urbane. Its mission is to champion new music and new singers, and its inaugural concert will include two UK premiere plus works by Philip Glass, Poulenc, Meredith Monk and others. Protegés Vox Next Gen will also perform. But the music doesn't stop when the concert ends: an education outreach project, Vox Roots, will get even more young people into music. Sounds like a chance to be in at the start of something life-changing when music in schools is at risk.

WHEN

Sunday 16 April, 6:30pm

WHERE

Asylum Chapel Caroline Gardens, Asylum Road, Peckham, London SE15 2SQ

Innocence, Royal Opera House

Simon Stone wrote and directed the National Theatre's Phaedra, and was the director of huge TV hit The Dig, starring Ralph Fiennes as the amateur archaeologist who unearths Sutton Hoo. Now Stone turns his talent for suspense to the staging of a very different drama, the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's opera Innocence. In modern-day Finland, an oddly subdued wedding is under way. When a waitress is taken ill, memories of a tragedy 10 years earlier are reawakened. Singers include Sandrine Piau (soprano), and Christopher Purves (bass), with Susanna Mällki (pictured), chief conductor of the Helskini Philharmonic Orchestra, making her ROH conducting debut.

WHEN

Monday 17 April to Thursday 4 May. Five performances, start times vary

WHERE

Royal Opera House, Bow Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9DD

Half Six Fix, London Symphony Orchestra

We love these early evening concerts that pack so much into an hour before dinner. Sir Simon Rattle (pictured) makes one of his last appearances in London as music director of the LSO, conducting John Adams's Harmonilehre. In this mighty work the American composer conjures up an electrifying San Francisco skyline, blending classical and pop musical styles. A rare and colossal work that will thrill younger music-lovers too.

WHEN

Wednesday 19 April, 6:30pm–7:30pm, with no interval

WHERE

Barbican Hall, Silk Street, Barbican, London EC2Y 8DS

Blue, English National Opera

Duty and conviction come face to face when a policeman father clashes with his activist son, in an opera receiving its UK premiere. Zwakele Tshabalala (pictured) plays the campaigning son, with Kenneth Kellogg as his father and Nadine Benjamin as his mother in what promises to be a really powerful production, conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren

WHEN

Thursday 20 April to Thursday 4 May. Six performances, start times vary

WHERE

English National Opera, Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4ES

Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, English National Opera

A new staging of one of the best-known and most-loved pieces of modern music, Henryk Górecki's Symphony No 3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Setting Polish texts, the moving work for orchestra and voice, first heard in 1992, meditates on the awful separation of mother and child. American soprano Nicole Chevalier (pictured) is the soprano soloist, and Russian-American conductor, Lidiya Yankovskaya makes her ENO conducting debut.

WHEN

Thursday 27 April to Saturday 6 May. Six performances, start times vary. Running time: 1hr with no interval

WHERE

English National Opera, Coliseum, St Martin's Lane, London WC2N 4ES