Roderick Williams – Wigmore Hall, April 6 [Theo Williams]

IT’S Holy Week, which means the concert schedules are awash with spiritual reflection proper to the time of Easter – mostly in the form of choral music, which comes either sprawling and traditional or lighter, pared-down, period style.

On the traditional front, the massed voices of the Royal Choral Society join the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall (all very monarchical this) for a big, gutsy Messiah on Good Friday afternoon, Apr 3: royalalberthall.com

But for something sharper, sleeker and more focused, the elite professional choir Polyphony are at Smith Square with their annual performance of the St John Passion, accompanied by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and my unswerving recommendation for that same time, Good Friday afternoon: sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk

Also Apr 3, there’s a lower-profile St John Passion at St George’s Hanover Square done by the parish choir with the London Handel Orchestra: london-handel-festival.com And at Marylebone Parish Church the choir is rolling out John Stainer’s creaky, kitsch but much-loved High Victorian oratorio The Crucifixion. Free admission, 6.30pm. And a perfect place to hear the piece because it was written for this church in 1887.

If you want something more recherché, the period band Fretwork are at Wigmore Hall, Apr 4, with The Resurrection Story by Heinrich Schutz: an early baroque musicalisation of the Easter narrative that predates Bach, done here as it would have been in Lutheran liturgy in Dresden 1623, with voices, viols and organ. wigmore-hall.org.uk

And if you want audience participation, try the come-and-sing day running at St Pancras Church NW1, Apr 4, where you can join professional soloists and an orchestra led by the eminent Simon Standage in a rehearsal and performance of Mozart’s Coronation Mass: stpancraschurch.org

• For something suitable to the season that isn’t choral, there’s an account of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Saviour – effectively a string quartet with a devotional agenda – at Wigmore Hall, Apr 3. It comes with the poet Ruth Padel reading meditative texts. wigmore-hall.org.uk

• Meanwhile, the king of modern English choral music, Sir John Rutter, turns up this week with a piece that isn’t choral at all. It’s his jazzily upbeat Piano Concerto which dates from the 1980s but doesn’t get many outings – so here’s an eminently catchable one with soloist Steven Osborne alongside the RPO. Rutter himself conducts. And also on the programme is a brand new work by the composer, to do with Shakespeare. Apr 9. cadoganhall.com

• An interesting recent arrival on the period circuit is a band called Figure, directed by Frederick Waxman, that stretches the standard envelope of baroque performance. And it’s doing so at Smith Square, Apr 9, with a programme that pairs composers of the past like Handel and Muffat with those of today like Caroline Shaw and Oliver Leith. sinfoniasmithsq.org.uk

• Song recital fans should know that Roderick Williams is singing English songs at the Wigmore, Apr 6 (wigmore-hall.org.uk) while Mary Bevan sings French ones at LSO St Luke’s, Apr 10 (lso.co.uk)

And fans of Rachmaninov’s piano preludes will want to know that they feature, Apr 10, in a programme by Hiro Takenouchi in the St Mary le Strand keyboard series: a concert venture that’s flourishing now the church is no longer an island surrounded by traffic. Gone are the police sirens. Peace and magic reign. stmarylestrand.com