Name: St John Passion
Start: 2027-03-10T19:00:00
Location: Southbank Centre

Helen Charlston

John Butt

Nick Pritchard

Hilary Cronin

Florian Störtz

Hugo Hymas

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

There could be no better way to end the year in which the OAE celebrates the 40th anniversary of its formation in 1986 than with a work that has been a mainstay. The Christmas Oratorio was first performed as six cantatas, each focusing on a different aspect of the Christmas story, across six feast days in different churches around Leipzig. We begin on the New Year’s Day Feast before joining the Magi on their journey to Bethlehem to honour the baby Jesus. The Evangelist’s narration interweaves with dramatic choruses, chorales and reflective arias from the cast of soloists.

Christmas Oratorio: Parts 4 – 6

Southbank Centre

The scene: Vienna, 1780s. The city is buzzing to the music of Joseph Haydn and his contemporaries Carl von Dittersdorf and Jan Vanhal, and a younger arrival, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Gossip in the gazettes and coffee houses is of the four getting together in a supergroup quartet. Perhaps trying out some of the cutting-edge musical ideas they’d later drop on Vienna’s concert-going public. In time, Dittersdorf and Vanhal slip from the spotlight their more famous friends own for centuries, but tonight’s concert rewinds the story. The music of the whole quartet breathes again. It lasts.

A Viennese House Party

The Rite erupts from history. It has fascinated musicians and audiences alike since that night in 1913. As its legend has grown, its truths have been obscured by myth. To encounter its radical force anew, we step into the world that formed it with the instruments Stravinsky knew in his youth. The bassoon’s opening call emerges more primordial, more fragile; gut strings add snap and bite to the brutal, irregular rhythms; the raw snarl of valved brass instruments intensifies the danger. The result reveals something more elemental—performance as ritual and invocation.

The Rite of Spring

John Butt conducts Bach's earliest surviving passion. An intense musical drama in which the eternal and mortal collide as the raw, human tragedy of Jesus' death plays out against the backdrop of divine history.

St John Passion

Tonight’s performance draws on Handel’s lifetime of producing hit shows for London’s theatres. Including around 40 operas and over 20 oratorios, his music itself becomes the stage: witness family quarrels, the twists and turns of love, the political schemes of tyrants undone, and the vulnerable and victorious all brought vividly to life.