Music for Holy Week

Edward Breen recalls buying George Malcolm's disc of Victoria's Tenebrae responsories as a teenager and encountering 'a disc of Renaissance music like no other...It shocked me but I couldn't tear myself away.' For this month's Specialist Guide, he has chosen recordings suitable for Holy Week 'which similarly capture arresting penitential atmospheres'.

(Gramophone, April 2015)

Holy Week is the period from Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday spanning the seven days immediately before Easter Sunday. It is a time of penance for Christians who believe that the suffering and sacrifice of Christ and His subsequent resurrection symbolises the hope that mankind will be redeemed from sin. In the Catholic liturgy, these events are expressed and commemorated through a complex, nuanced re-enactment and meditation for which there is a vast and fascinating musical repertoire, particularly so from the late medieval and renaissance periods. 

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