AFTER generations of hatred and grieving, and 80 years after the fall of Singapore, it’s time to forgive and reconcile, the Australian War Memorial’s musical artist-in-residence Christopher Latham says. 

With that in mind, Latham has embarked on the mightiest of epic journeys in his musical series “Flowers of Peace” with the coming “POW Requiem”. 

The epic concert will canvas the experiences of prisoners of war around the world, paying special attention to Australians’ experiences closer to home – in Changi, on the Thai Burma Railway, and in the Sandakan Death March.

Straddling the globe, act one will look at POWs in Europe and Australia, including Italian and German interns as well as the Cowra breakout of 1944, the biggest in the war, while act two will turn to the POWs in Asia. 

As with his previous blockbusters, “The Gallipoli Symphony”, the “Diggers’ Requiem” and the “Vietnam Requiem”, Latham has galvanised the full force of Australia’s musical royalty to write no fewer than eight new commissions. 

The performers are no less formidable – singers Susannah Lawergren and Andrew Goodwin, Riley Lee on shakuhachi, Dong Ma on erhu, Yuhki Mayne on violin, Bill Risby and Edward Neeman on piano, Alice Giles on harp, military musicians, the CSO, and ANU School of Music and choirs.

Spectacular it may be, but some commentators believe the POW experience is too grim for music.

However, Latham says it’s a story that has to be told once and for all, in order to close the book.

He has a formidable ally in his old friend composer Jonathan Mills, perhaps best known as director of the Edinburgh International Festival from 2006 to 2014. 

Sir Jonathan has obtained the philanthropic support of Metal Manufactures Limited, but earns his place in the POW requiem because he is also the composer of “Sandakan Threnody”, a savage lament for those who suffered in Australia’s worst wartime atrocity.

I caught up with him in Canberra recently where he adamantly contested the charge that the POW requiem is a downer. 

“Chris is doing remarkable things, all on a very large scale. It is an epic part of our history, so it deserves to have the same kind of ambition,” he told me. 

“These were defining narratives in the history of Australia, seared into our memories, but Chris wants us to see these moments as places for healing.”

“I did not write ‘Sandakan Threnody’ as an accusation; ‘Threnody’ is ‘grieving’ in Ancient Greek, a public, not a private act, so it was about paying tribute to the people in World War II, saying goodbye to them while they were still with us.”

His 2001 threnody forms a key part of the requiem as it evokes the pain and suffering of the 2345 Australian and British prisoners of war who were marched to death on the road from Sandakan to Ranau in present-day Malaysian Sabah – only six survived. 

His own father, the noted heart surgeon, Frank Mills, narrowly avoided the fate of his comrades when he and other officers and NCOs were transferred to Kuching. After the war, Frank Mills became one of the leading advocates for reconciliation between Australians and Japanese. He even spent his honeymoon in Japan.

Music, old and new, binds the requiem throughout. Debussy’s “Reverie”, arranged by Margaret Dryburgh and Norah Chambers, is used to reflect POWs’ mental state, while Slim De Grey’s “My Castle In The Air” from “Changi Song Book” tells of daredevil RAAF pilots who evaded capture. 

In a segment about starvation, Latham uses the “De Profundis” from “Sandakan Threnody”, but commissioned “The Fall of Singapore” from Cyrus Meurant.

Nobody expects the “POW Requiem” to be a laugh a minute, but Latham has found glimmers of hope in a section about love and care and in “The Entertainers”, which deals with concert programs, especially in Changi, where the standards of acting, set design and production were remarkably professional. 

He’s approaching the project with characteristic zeal as he assembles and adjusts the musical scores, sources more than 220 slides for a visual backing and engages with POW families and Canberra’s Japanese community to spread his message of peace and forgiveness.

Latham believes there is much good to be found. The Canberra-Nara sister city relationship, he says, goes back to the Thai-Burma railway where POW chaplain Father Sam Marsden promised that if he survived, he’d go to Japan to preach forgiveness and reconciliation. He did.

And after a recent preview, representatives from the Japanese embassy and community told him that they felt that art, more than any other mechanism, would be the key to repairing this historic wound.

The “POW Requiem”, Llewellyn Hall, 1pm-4.15pm, Saturday, October 29. 

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