NZSO Anzac concert commemorates First World War

11 April 2016 - NZSO media release for immediate release

NZSO Anzac concert commemorates First World War

The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra continues its commemoration of the centenary of the First World War this year with a poetry-themed Anzac programme, including the works of two composers who fell during the Great War.

Two of the featured composers died during the 1916 Battle of the Somme – Australian Frederick Septimus Kelly and Englishman George Butterworth.

Also on the programme is New Zealand composer Ross Harris’ Symphony No. 2, with settings of poems by Vincent O’Sullivan that remember those New Zealand soldiers who were shot for desertion in World War One. Sullivan’s deeply felt descriptions of violence, love and tragedy are reflected in this moving and dramatic work.

New Zealand conductor Hamish McKeich says Napier-born soprano Madeleine Pierard’s intensely expressive voice is ideal for this work which has been described as “often beautiful and sometimes frightening”. (NZ Listener)

“Madeleine has an exceptionally expressive voice and Harris’ Second Symphony was composed with her in mind,” McKeich says. “She first performed it back in 2006 when it premiered at the Auckland Town Hall so she is the ideal choice for this NZSO concert which celebrates the work’s 10th anniversary. I’m really looking forward to conducting this work on such an important national occasion.”

Hamish McKeich has forged an impressive international conducting career alongside a passionate loyalty for developing the repertoire of contemporary and experimental music. He served as the NZSO’s Associate Conductor from 2002-2006 and he has given more than 100 world premieres of new works. In 2012, he was awarded a Douglas Lilburn Trust citation for services to New Zealand music.

Frederick Septimus Kelly’s elegy for strings and harp In Memoriam Rupert Brooke was written in commemoration of his friend, poet Rupert Brooke, who Kelly served with. Brooke was buried at midnight on the Isle of Skyros among the olive groves and the composition portrays Kelly’s feelings on that night. After the ensuing battles at Gallipoli, Kelly was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for conspicuous gallantry during the evacuation in January 1916. He composed In Memoriam Rupert Brooke while recuperating; however a bullet claimed his life at Beaucourt-sur-Ancre at the Somme on 13 November 1916 while leading an attack on a German machine-gun emplacement.

Similarly, George Butterworth was killed on the Somme in August 1916 just a few weeks after being awarded the Military Cross. Before he left for the front in 1915 he had destroyed much of what he had composed, so his posthumous reputation rests on just a few pieces, including the orchestral rhapsody A Shropshire Lad, which is a score of gently fluctuating colours built on themes taken from the poetry of A.E. Housman.

Spirit of Anzac: Voices from the Field, supported by the Lottery Grants Board, will be performed in Wellington on Thursday 21 April and Auckland on Friday 22 April.

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