Soprano Lucy Crowe [askonasholt.com]

THAT it’s Easter means two things in music: Bach and Handel. And Good Friday – April 18 – brings you nothing but, with at least four significant performances of the Bach Passions across London, and a grand Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall. The Messiah comes from the Royal Choral Society and RPO, done with might, muscle and a serious head-count: royalalberthall.com

Meanwhile, there’s a Matthew Passion at St George’s Hanover Square, playing liturgically as part of Good Friday Vespers, with congregational singing and a sermon – which will make it all rather long but at least give you sense of how Bach’s 18th-century Leipzig audience would have experienced the piece: london-handel-festival

Then there are no less than three John Passions: from the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican (barbican.org.uk), from the English Concert at Wigmore Hall (wigmore-hall.org.uk) and from the uber-choral group Polyphony at Smith Square (sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk). My preference would be Polyphony – but I’m not alone in that, so expect a run on tickets.

• The 19th-century composer John Stainer wasn’t in quite the same league as Bach or Handel but his deathless contribution to Easter repertoire, The Crucifixion, is something many a choirboy grew up on and remembers fondly despite its creaky banalities. So if you’re one of them (a choirboy as opposed to creakily banal), know that there’s a Good Friday performance at St Marylebone Parish Church for whose musical forces the piece was written in 1887. What’s more, it’s free. stmarylebone.org

• Once the great ceremonies of Easter are over, there’s a rapid descent from heaven to hell on Easter Monday with a Wigmore Hall performance of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale: a dry, acerbic piece of music-theatre about a man who sells his violin (in truth, his soul) to the devil and comes to an equivocally sticky end. I’ve never loved its moralising tone, but many do. www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

Also at Wigmore Hall during the week, look out for the serenely intense German baritone Christian Gerhaher singing Schumann, April 24; and on April 22 an evening of arias by Bach and Handel sung by soprano Lucy Crowe but featuring the oboist Olivier Stankiewicz in baroque mode. www.wigmore-hall.org.uk

• It isn’t often that you find a full performance of Erik Satie’s solo piano piece Vexations, because it lasts anywhere between 16 and 20 hours depending on the stamina of the player and staying power of the audience. But the magnificent Igor Levit is giving it a go at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, April 24-25. And he’s doing it with the enigmatic performance artist Marina Abramovic – though what her function will be, I’ve no idea. Probably minimal. If you have the time and constitu­tion for this marathon – it’s just one page of music repeated 840 times – I salute you: tickets are available for either the whole thing or for one-hour slots. southbankcentre.co.uk

Personally, I think your money would be better spent next door at the Festival Hall where, on April 25, an artist of far greater substance than Abramovic – the director William Kentridge – has a project running with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Called Oh To Believe in Another World, it’s a semi-abstracted film about Stalin’s Russia that plays alongside Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony under the baton of Marin Alsop. A must-see/hear. And paired with Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. southbankcentre.co.uk