Recorded more than 50 years ago by the Arab Christian soprano Fairuz, ‘Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs’ is one of the greatest yet least-known, certainly in the West, popular religious recordings of our time, and an indelibly beautiful hosanna to the great gift of Easter: hope

In Jerusalem recently I overheard vocal music of such rare beauty that I had to stop and listen. The voice, a solemn-sounding Arabic soprano, radiated a hushed intensity of emotion and, it seemed, a deep religious sorrow. I have no Arabic, but words from the New Testament, “Christos”, “Mary”, were discernable.

The voice belonged to Fairuz, the Edith Piaf-like diva of the Arab world, who was born in Beirut in 1934 to a Christian Maronite mother and a Syriac Orthodox father. Her celebrity-like mono-moniker – Fairuz – is Arabic for the precious gem turquoise. She is unquestionably the greatest living diva of the Middle East. The music came from an album of eight Easter hymns sung by Fairuz in a number of Beirut churches between 1962 and 1965. Recorded live, Good Friday Eastern Sacred Songs draws inspiration from all three of Lebanon’s main Christian rites: Maronite, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic. The album powerfully conveys the sorrows of the Easter liturgy and the saving hope of Christ’s Passion. In its most beautiful hymn, “Wa Habibi” (“Oh My Love”), Fairuz imagines Mary as she addresses her son in his dying moments and, over a church harmonium and male voice choir, offers tender words of maternal grief.