If you can not make it to Glasgow to hear the Scottish composer James MacMillan and two Dominican Friars chant the Passion story as part of the Good Friday Church service, then you still have a chance this week as Sir Colin Davis will conduct the same piece with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Listen above to the report by Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe.

James Macmillan is a lay Dominican and directs the choir at the Dominican-run St Columba's parish in Glasgow. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are, says MacMillan, “the most important days in human history. The Passion is about why God wanted to interrupt human history and let Himself be known through His Son. It is the culmination of Jesus’s ministry."

“I went for St. John as it is the account I know best: the one Roman Catholics hear every Good Friday. It is a very dramatic telling of the story, an eyewitness account, almost a reportage approach to the Crucifixion,” he says. The work is structured around two choirs, an orchestra and a soloist who interprets the role of Jesus. Its major focus is the “incredible courtroom battle between Pilate and Jesus”, though MacMillan has also highlighted the “heartbreaking encounter at the foot of the Cross between John, the beloved Disciple, and Mary”.