Jump to site navigation | Jump to section navigation

Easter at King's

Easter at King's flyer

Easter at King's was started in 2004 and has grown into an enormously popular series of concerts and services for the Easter period. Some of the concerts and services are broadcast on BBC Radio 3. A service recorded for television, 'Easter from King's', is broadcast by BBC2 over the Easter period.

Download the 2012 programme or browse the listing below.

Enquiries: For general enquiries please contact the series organiser, Sarah Chambre (concerts [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk).

Exploring the Passion

3 April 2012, 2.00pm
Corpus Playroom, St Edward's Passage
John Butt

John Butt

An afternoon with leading Bach scholar Professor John Butt, who explores Bach’s St Matthew Passion. John will be joined by James Gilchrist and David Wilson-Johnson in conversation about the Passion and the roles of the Evangelist and Christus. This precedes the performance of the Passion at King's later in the day.

Tickets: £7.50 (£3 students), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

With kind permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College and the ADC committee.

Bach: St Matthew Passion

3 April 2012, 6.30pm
The Chapel
The Choir

King's College Choir

  • Bach: St Matthew Passion

James Gilchrist, Evangelist
David Wilson-Johnson, Christ
Richard Lloyd Morgan, Pilate
Sophie Bevan, soprano
James Laing, counter-tenor
Thomas Walker, tenor
Lukas Jakobski bass

King’s College Choir
Choristers of Jesus and St Catharine’s Colleges
Academy of Ancient Music
Stephen Cleobury, conductor

Tickets: SOLD OUT

With generous support from Robin Boyle.

Rumours of Passion

4 April 2012, 5.30pm
Clare College Chapel
Michael O'Siadhail

Micheal O'Siadhail

A sequence of music, readings and poetry based on the strange and stirring Servant Songs of Isaiah takes place in the intimate setting of Clare College Chapel. The evening includes four poems by distinguished Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail, especially commissioned for the occasion and read by the poet.

  • Victoria: Vere languores nostros
  • Begbie: O you whose love laid out our skies
  • Holst: Nunc dimittis
  • Gesualdo: Ecce vidimus eum
  • Spiritual: He never said a mumbling word (arr. Toby Young)
  • Tavener: Nunc dimittis

The Cambridge-Duke Voices
Toby Young, conductor
Micheal O’Siadhail, reader

Tickets: unreserved £12 (£5 student standby), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

With the generous support of the Bible Society.

Illuminating Messiaen exhibition

5 April 2012, 11.00am
Corpus Playroom, St Edward's Passage

Throughout his composing life Olivier Messiaen thought in highly visual terms – he wanted his music to dazzle and overwhelm us like glorious light through stained glass windows. This photography exhibition, by members of Duke Divinity School, takes its inspiration from the Visions de l’Amen, one of his most colourful works. Discover a new angle on the music, ahead of the evening concert.

Free and open to the public.

With thanks to Duke Divinity School, Duke University, North Carolina.

Sung Eucharist and Stripping of the Altar

5 April 2012, 5.30pm
The Chapel
  • Frank Martin: Movements from the Mass for double choir

King’s College Choir

Preacher: Dr Richard Hays, Dean of Duke University Divinity School, North Carolina

Illuminating Messiaen (talk)

5 April 2012, 7.00pm
Corpus Playroom, St Edward's Passage
David Owen Norris

David Owen Norris

Distinguished pianist, composer and broadcaster David Owen Norris presents an introduction to Olivier Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen, which is to be performed in the Chapel immediately afterwards.

David’s talk will draw on an exhibition of photographs, “Illuminating Messiaen”, inspired by the music and displayed during the performance.

Admission free to ticketholders for the 8pm concert. Please book, as places are limited. Booking: Shop at King’s, King's Parade, Cambridge (tel: 01223 769 340; email: shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk).

Chamber Music for Maundy Thursday

5 April 2012, 8.00pm
The Chapel
Cordelia Williams

Cordelia Williams

Written in the midst of the Second World War in occupied France, Messiaen’s spectacular Visions de l’Amen for two pianos is one of his most well-known and accessible pieces, encompassing a huge range of emotion and pianistic virtuosity.

Messiaen paints a vast panorama in sound, depicting the passage from the World's Creation to its re-creation, including at its centre a profound meditation on Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane.

  • Messiaen : Visions de L’Amen
  • JS Bach: Chorale Prelude ‘Herzlich tut mich verlangen’

Jeremy Begbie, piano
Cordelia Williams, piano

Tickets: unreserved £15 (£5 student standby), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

Meditation for Maundy Thursday

5 April 2012, 9.30pm
The Chapel
Richard Lloyd Morgan

Richard Lloyd Morgan

  • Couperin: Leçons de te´ne`bres

Cressida Sharp, soprano
Margaret Carpenter, soprano
Richard Boothby, viola da gamba
Tim Brown, organ continuo
Richard Lloyd Morgan, cantor

Admission free. A retiring collection will be taken to defray the costs of the performance.

With generous support from Tim Brown.

Ante-Communion and Veneration of the Cross

6 April 2012, 10.30am
The Chapel
  • Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus
  • Victoria: St John Passion

King’s College Choir

Good Friday Choral Evensong

6 April 2012, 5.30pm
The Chapel
  • Tallis: The Lamentations of Jeremiah (Part 2)

Choral Scholars of King’s College

MacMillan: Seven Last Words from the Cross

6 April 2012, 7.30pm
The Chapel
Choristers singing

King's College Choir

“... MacMillan's masterpiece ... the maturity in this composition is astounding: the tonal structure of the seven settings, harmony which can be spare or lush without ever being overwritten, an inexorable sense of the drama in the text, the balance between voice and strings. A few seconds, in difficult times, when meditation was centre stage, when it was possible to regain optimism.”
Guardian (on Seven Last Words)

MacMillan’s tour de force is partnered by Palestrina’s intense depiction of Mary, mother of Jesus, at the foot of the Cross and Tavener’s meditation on “O my people, what have I done to you?” The expressive solo cello and serene strings present unwavering faith against the sound and fury of the timpani.

  • MacMillan: Kiss on Wood
  • Palestrina: Stabat Mater
  • Tavener: Popule Meus
  • MacMillan: Seven Last Words from the Cross

Guy Johnston, cello
King’s College Choir
Britten Sinfonia
Stephen Cleobury, conductor

Tickets: £30, £22, £18, £12 (£5 student standby), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

Elgar: The Apostles

7 April 2012, 7.00pm
The Chapel
Ailish Tynan

Ailish Tynan

“You are a great magician” wrote A.C. Benson to Elgar after The Apostles was first performed in King’s College Chapel in 1906. “Upon me it produced an extraordinary effect – the beauty of certain movements is incredible – out of the reach of art. I can’t conceive the process by which you dreamed of such sounds.” Such is the deeply moving experience in store for the audience that comes to King’s Chapel this Holy Saturday to hear in the words and music of this great oratorio the story of Christ’s apostles, from their calling, through to the events at Golgotha and the Sepulchre, to the Resurrection.

  • Elgar: The Apostles

Ailish Tynan, Blessed Virgin/Angel Gabriel
Susan Bickley, Mary Magdalene
Timothy Robinson, St John/Narrator
Mark Stone, St Peter
Roderick Williams, Jesus
David Wilson-Johnson, Judas

Philharmonia Chorus
BBC Concert Orchestra
Stephen Cleobury conductor

Tickets: £40, £30, £22, £18 (£5 student standby), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

Radio 3 logo

The concert is being recorded by BBC Radio 3 and must start punctually. Please arrive in good time; latecomers will not be admitted until the interval.

Easter Sunday Sung Eucharist with Procession

8 April 2012, 10.30am
The Chapel
  • Haydn: Kleine orgelmesse

King’s College Choir
accompanied by a string ensemble

Festal Evensong

8 April 2012, 3.30pm
The Chapel
  • Howells: Collegium Regale
  • Vaughan Williams: Rise Heart, thy Lord is Risen

King’s College Choir

Organ recital for Eastertide

9 April 2012, 4.00pm
The Chapel
John Butt

John Butt

Bach’s preludes on Easter chorales (from Das ‘Orgelbüchlein’) and the three central pieces from Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement form the core of this programme. These two composers have most obviously provided a bridge between liturgical organ music and the wider world of western classical music. Reger’s concise ‘Dankpsalm’, based around hymn tunes, offers an obvious development of Bach’s idiom in late Romantic guise. Marcel Dupré’s second symphony is not – unlike so much of his organ music – specifically associated with religious devotion, but is perhaps his boldest work in the modernist musical language of the late 1920s.

  • JS Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 547
  • JS Bach: Preludes from Das ‘Orgelbüchlein’, BWV 625-630
  • Reger: ‘Dankpsalm’, op 145 no 2
  • Messiaen: Pieces from Livre du Saint Sacrement
  • Dupré: Deuxième Symphonie, op 26

John Butt, organ

Tickets: £10 (£5 students), available from The Shop at King’s, 13 King’s Parade, Cambridge CB2 1SP (01223 769340; shop [at] kings [dot] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk). Opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30am–5.30pm, Sunday 10.00am–4.30pm.

RSS feed: Syndicate content