Messages through the Wire features music by soldiers, captives and refugees. Photo: Sutteerug.
Wagga is set to experience some of the most transcendent pieces of music composed for violin and piano written by soldiers and prisoners of war.
The Messages through the Wire concert will showcase music written during war and imprisonment, and feature Doctor Edward Neeman playing the piano and Christopher Latham playing the violin at St. John’s Anglican Church on Friday (2 September).
The music was written in prisoner of war camps. The first thing prisoners and internees did when they arrived in these camps was to create their own culture, to remind them that they were human, despite their deeply inhuman surroundings.
Putting on shows gave everyone the chance to laugh, sing and feel pleasure, and transported them out of their barbed wire cages, even if only for an evening.
Compositions for the program include works by soldier/composer Frederick Septimus Kelly (written behind the wire in the trenches of Gallipoli), Numbers by William Hilsley (a British-German Jew), and Quartet for the End of Time – a transcendent modern masterpiece by the French composer, Olivier Messiaen (a French army soldier captured by Germans).
It will also feature music from the Changi Songbook which was written by Slim de Grey and Ray Tullipan, with a collection of 24 songs.
The concert’s second half will have works by Jewish composers Erwin Schulhoff, Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann, who were imprisoned and killed in WWII.
The concert will conclude with works by composers who fled the Holocaust and survived.
Concert organiser and Canberra-based musician Mr Latham had spent over 30 years curating music written by prisoners of war.
“I want to show people what I think are the most beautiful music I have ever found,” Mr Latham said.
“This project is about trying to tell the truth about what happened to the prisoners of war but also seeing if we can let go of the bitterness because there’s no point in the children carrying the hatred … and the generational trauma.
“There are enormous amounts of pain and suffering … and these are all pieces that have a really powerful role in the person’s life.”
He said the war had left people with an immeasurable amount of hatred and bitterness.
“It’s like a concentrated black ink and I want to have that expelled from people,” he said.
“So it’s trying to figure out how I can use music to raise awareness of what happened and also help resolve what happened.
“I think it’s good for humans to forgive,” he said.
The musician of over 40 years expects the audience to laugh, cry and ponder deeply about very powerful ideas about humanity.
“The emotional landscapes of the pieces are quite wide … some pieces are very sad, while others are very happy and seriously funny,” he said.
“They’re like vitamin pills of optimism.”
Mr Latham said the concert pianist Mr Neeman is a genius who had won international competitions.
The renowned pianist told Mr Latham the concert was very interesting as all the pieces were like facets of a whole.
“You could come from any cultural background and find something you’d relate to at the concert because it’s just so varied,” Mr Latham said.
“Some of it’s very Aussie, British, Jewish, and some very German … lots of different cultural expressions, and they are all deep and authentic.”
Mr Latham has a long history of his family serving in the war and the community. His grandfather on his mother’s side was a French sailor in World War II, while his grandmother on his father’s side was a nurse in World War I. His father was a doctor at Royal Brisbane Children’s Hospital, and his mother was a nurse.
“My parents produced a child who is a musician, is very religious and someone who wants to help heal these deep wounds [of generational trauma].
“That’s my motivation.”
He said music is everything to him.
“I can’t exist without it … it’s the only thing that makes sense to me,” he said.
“The greatest gift I was given when I was born was that I knew what I was good at … music made me alive. I went straight towards it, and I have never left it.”
The concert will be held at St John’s Anglican Church on Friday 2 September from 7 pm to 9 pm. Tickets are available at the door – $25 for adults and $15 for concessions.
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