News location:

Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / Re sounding Gallipoli at the High Court

concert

DR Chris Latham has taken on an ambitious project, presenting wartime music in 25 concerts over four years. This first concert in the series Latham has called “Flowers of War” showed conclusively how “Flowers” will ‘bear witness’, as the program notes say, to ‘how music … sustained the human spirit in the battlefield’.

Camaraderie, bravado, and the anticipation of adventure shone in pieces like “Australia Will Be There”, “Invercargill” and “Where are the Boys of the Old Brigade”.

New Zealand-born baritone, John-Henry Te Hira, sang “Po Artarau” (“Now is the Hour”) and “Jesu Lover of my Soul”, in Maori. His pleasant but light, gentle voice unfortunately struggled to fill the cavernous High Court foyer.

Another baritone, Alexander Knight, featured a lot during the concert singing happy, popular songs and poignant ones. His very fine and powerful voice had no trouble filling the space and creating the emotions the songs demanded.

These pieces juxtaposed sad Turkish ironies: the mournful “Motherland March”, the hopelessness of Gallipoli in the folk song “Çanakkale Içinde”, and the funeral song “SaygiMarsi”. Ibrahim Karaisli sang them all superbly.

The stars of the concert, a cornet and a bugle, were played at Gallipoli, both carrying stories of their own and one of them – the bugle – being played for the first time in nearly a century in a moving rendition of “The Last Post” and “Reverie” at the end of the concert. A long silence preceded a tentative and then thunderous applause from the packed house.

[Photo: Chris Latham conducting the Canberra Camerata Brass with Alex Knight and Paul Goodchild, by Peter Hislop]

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Music

Cunio takes top job at NZ School of Music

Immediate past head of the ANU School of Music, Kim Cunio, is to become head of school at Te Kōki, the NZ School of Music, part of the Victoria University of Wellington, reports HELEN MUSA.

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews