PROGRAMMES FOR EASTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 768, 9 April 1954, Page 26

PROGRAMMES FOR EASTER

\/ HEN Johann Sebastian Bach was offered-with no great enthusiasm -the post of cantor at the Thomasschule, Leipzig, to which he was attached for the rest of his life, he was warned that his music was not to smack of the theatre. Soon after that his St. John Passion had its first performance in St. -Thomas’s Church. The St, John Passion is probably second only to his St. Matthew Passion, generally considered the greatest work of its kind ever written, and these two have, as usual, a prominent place in Easter programmes from NZBS stations. : Those who have heard the BBC recording of the St. John Passion will not need to be told to listen when it is broadcast again from all YC stations on the evening of Good: Friday. The performance is by the BBC Choral Society and the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Stations which will broadcast the St. Matthew Passion in whole or in part on Good Friday include 1YA and 3YA and the four YZ stations. The broadcast from 3YZ is of recorded excerpts from a performance by the combined Greymouth Methodist and Presbyterian Church choirs. Among other Easter programmes of local origin to be broadcast on Good Friday are Easter Epilogue, by the chapel choir of St. Peter’s Church, Cambridge, from 1XH; Crowned with Thorns, from St. Mary’s Church, New Plymouth, from 2XP; From Olivet to Calvary from Trinity Methodist Church, Wanganui, from 2XA; and An Easter Offering, from | Chalmers Church, ‘Timaru, from 3XC.