This year’s Lent and Easter season will see the world premiere of Ēriks’ new work Two Easter Anthems. On 15 April, Good Friday, the Münchner Knabenchor (Munich Boys Choir) and conductor Ralf Ludewig and the Boys Choir of the Liepaja Music, Art and Design Secondary School and conductor Ilze Balode join the stage for the world premiere of the diptych Two Easter Anthems in the Great Amber concert hall in the coastal city of Liepaja in Latvia.
Among Ēriks’ works that are performed during the Lent and Easter season is Passion and Resurrection. In the UK Passion and Resurrection will be performed by the Facade Ensemble and Benedict Collins Rice as part of their Lent tour programme, which also includes de Morales’ In Illo Tempore, Assumpsit Iesus and Per tuam crucem, Pärt’s And One of the Pharisees…, Penderecki’s Agnus Dei, Goehr’s Fugue on the Notes of Psalm 4 as well as the UK premiere of Per Nørgård’s Out of this World – Parting. The ensemble will perform in St Paul’s, Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham (8 April), St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds (10 April), St Clement Danes Church in London (12 April), and Ely Cathedral (13 April).
On 10 April Passion and Resurrection will be performed in Stockholm Cathedral by the Stockholm Cathedral Choir, string orchestra, soloists from Mälardalen University, and conductor Johan Hammarström. The programme also includes Poulenc’s Quatre motets pour un temps de penitence. On 15 April State Choir Latvia, Sinfonietta Riga, Korean soprano Yeree Suh and conductor Māris Sirmais will perform Passion and Resurrection in St Peter’s Church, Riga as part of their Good Friday concert programme, which also includes Poulenc’s Stabat Mater.
Passion and Resurrection is a 30-minute oratorio in four movements combining Latin and English texts from Holy Scripture and Catholic and Byzantine church liturgies, and includes a quotation from de Morales’ Parce mihi, Domine. Scored for soloist, mixed choir, and string orchestra, the work was commissioned and premiered in 2005 and first recorded in 2006 by State Choir Latvija, the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, and conductor Māris Sirmais. Passion and Resurrection was also recorded by Polyphony, Britten Sinfonia, and Stephen Layton and released on their 2011 album of the same title on Hyperion and most recently by the Portland State Chamber Choir and Ethan Sperry on their 2017 album The Doors of Heaven on Naxos (Gramophone Editor’s Choice).