Best concerts and opera in April and for Easter

By Claudia Pritchard on 8/3/2022

The Easter story, two literary greats cross over into music, and composers tackle war and peace

Sean Shibe plays Bach and Steve Reich

Enjoy the best of several musical worlds when virtuoso guitarist Sean Shibe performs music by JS Bach in a programme with a thrilling finale: Shibe playing, with the benefit of playback, all eight parts in modernist Steve Reich's exciting Electric Counterpoint. Also on the programme, music from Shibe’s native Scotland and Buddha, by the US composer Julius Eastman.

WHEN

Fri 1 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

St Martin in the Fields,Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 4JJ

Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey sings Offred in The Handmaid's Tale. Photo: Rosetta Greek

The Handmaid's Tale, English National Opera

Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale continues to alarm and fascinate, and to emerge in other forms. Now comes the timely revival of the opera by Danish composer Poul Ruders that has all the elements of the original story. A fine cast includes mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey (pictured).

WHEN

04 Apr 2022 – 14 Apr 2022, Five evening performances, plus one 3PM matinee, Sun 10 April

WHERE

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

Joyce DiDonato: Eden

The incomparable mezzo-soprano and brilliant communicator Joyce DiDonato sings music through the ages inspired by our fragile natural world. She is joined by the electrifying Italian Baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro under Maxim Emelyanychev in arias by Handel, Gluck, Cavalli and others.

WHEN

Tues 5 & Wed 6 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

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

Mitsuko Uchida plays Beethoven

For sheer eloquence through music there are few to compare with pianist Mitsuko Uchida, and in Beethoven's exploratory Piano Concerto No 4 she finds both the composer's poetry and his personality. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski pops back from Munich to conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the first UK performance of Helmut Lachenmann’s blackly humorous Marche Fatale, and then sets out across the great expanses of Anton Bruckner’s massive Sixth Symphony.

WHEN

Sat 9 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

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 Mark Stone, Sophie Bevan, Jane Irwin, Toby Spence and Roderick Williams (pictured), plus young voices from Finchley Children's Music Group and Southwark Cathedral Girls' Choir. This expansive and thoughtful is sung in two parts, with a long lunch interval from 12.15PM to 2.15PM

WHEN

Sun 10 April 2022, 11PM to 3:45PM, including two-hour interval

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

Pergolesi's Stabat Mater

The young Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi did not live to fulfil the astonishing promise he showed with his captivating setting of solemn words for Easter. In his Stabat Mater, two high voices combine movingly to retrace the sorrow of Jesus's mother Mary. Soloists this evening are soprano Anna Devin and counter-tenor Hugh Cutting. Simon Over conducts the exciting young orchestra Southbank Sinfonia in a performance of the masterpiece that forms part of the Easter Festival of music at St John's Smith Square.

WHEN

Tues 12 April, 7:30PM

WHERE

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

Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra

A very rare appearance in London by Croatia's premier musicians, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra. With conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, soloist Tamsin Waley-Cohen (pictured) performs Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in a programme that opens with four short songs for voice and orchestra by Dora Pejačević sung by Croatian soprano Marija Vidović. In the second half, Mahler’s mould-breaking Symphony No. 1.

WHEN

Thurs 14 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

Cadogan Hall, 5 Sloane Terrace, London SW1X 9DQ

Bach's St John Passion

Outstanding early music ensemble the Academy of Ancient Music is directed from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings (pictured) in Bach's other great Easter work, his St John Passion. Nicholas Mulroy sings the Evangelist with Dingle Yandell as Christus, and other 'roles' sung by sopranos Zoe Brookshaw and Jessica Cale, altos Anna Harvey and Jessica Dandy, tenor Hugo Hymas tenor, and basses George Humphreys and William Gaunt. A Good Friday feast of music, preceded by a free talk at 2PM.

WHEN

Fri 15 April 2022, 3PM (NOTE TIME)

WHERE

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

Zadie Smith and the BBC Symphony Orchestra

The novelist writes knowledgeably and with passion about music from many genres in her books and essays, and now she takes to the stage to explore its magic even further. The author of White Teeth took a job as a jazz singer while at university, and her 2016 novel Swing Time, delights in music and dance. This entertaining concert reveals the music and the artists that have inspired her.

WHEN

Fri 22 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

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

London Philharmonic Orchestra, War and Peace

A timely concert that depicts both conflict and resolution. As war loomed in 1940, the young Benjamin Britten grieved for a stricken world in his Sinfonia da Requiem. Three years later, as Britain weathered the Blitz, the 71-year-old Ralph Vaughan Williams promised a vision of peace in his serene Fifth Symphony. Both works are played by the LPO under Edwards Gardner (pictured), plus the UK premiere of LPO composer-in-residence Brett Dean's new Cello Concerto, written for tonight's soloist, Alban Gerhardt.

WHEN

Wed 27 April 2022, 7:30PM

WHERE

Royal Festival Hall, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX