This Easter Day service of Choral Evensong is probably the church's most important day of the year. Easter Day is a triumphant expression of joy at Christ’s rising from the dead.

Included here is John Casken’s settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis and the Introit – a commission by Durham Cathedral - is Michael Berkeley’s setting 'First the sun then the shadow'. Psalm 105 is sung to various chants and Anthem is the well known setting by S S Wesley of Blessed be the God and Father.

This is one of a series of many choir recordings made by Priory of the Durham Cathedral Choir, stretching back nearly 30 years.

Contents:
1. Voluntary: Rhapsody in D flat, Op.17 No.1: Herbert Howells
2. The Easter Acclamations: Conrad Eden
3. Introit: First the sun, then the shadow: Michael Berkeley
4. Sentence
5. The Preces: Francis Jackson
6. Office Hymn: A brighter dawn is breaking (melody from Selnecker’s Christliche Psalmen, Leipzig, 1587; words by Percy Dearmer)
7. Psalm 105 chants by Frederick Arthur Gore Ouseley, John Goss (from Jeremiah Clarke), Robert Cooke and Edwin Monk
8. First Lesson: Song of Solomon 3. 2-5; 8. 6, 7 (NRSV) read by Sylvia Lancelot
9. Magnificat: John Casken
10. Second Lesson: John 20. 11-18 (NRSV) read by Canon Rosalind Brown
11. Nunc dimittis: John Casken
12. The Apostles’ Creed
13. The Lesser Litany: Francis Jackson
14. Lord’s Prayer: Francis Jackson
15. Responses: Francis Jackson
16. Collects: Francis Jackson
17. Anthem 'Blessed be the God and Father': Samuel Sebastian Wesley
18. The Prayers and Grace
19. Hymn: At the Lamb’s high feast we sing (melody by Jacob Hintze, harmony by Johann Sebastian Bach; words from a Latin Breviary hymn, translated by Robert Campbell)
20. The Blessing (Amen: Orlando Gibbons)
21. Final Responses: Francis Jackson
22. Voluntary: Choral-Improvisation sur le Victimae paschali: Charles Tournemire, reconstructed by Maurice Duruflé