• Tracks

Sir John Eliot Gardiner's personal curation of Easter Choral music inspired by his family's annual Easter Play at his home in Springhead, Dorset. A companion to the Monteverdi Choir's 1998 recording Once as I remember, which told the story of the Springhead Christmas Play. Structured around a series of tableaux, narrating through a combination of the different Gospel accounts, it is a dramatic retelling of the Resurrection story, employing disparate musical styles and frequent shifts of focus and perspective, all held together by the creative vision of a Dorset mother and her son. He writes: "This personal selection of music for Easter from the 11th to the 20th centuries tells the story of the Resurrection and Christ's appearances to his disciples. It is based on my experience of compiling and directing the music for a mimed Easter play, performed in village churches in Dorset every year between 1963 and 1984, the brainchild of my mother, Marabel Gardiner, to whose memory this recording is dedicated."