In Remembrance - facing conflicts through music

The New Zealand School of Music Orchestra presents a concert on the 70th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre.

Anthony Ritchie: Remember Parihaka Ernest Bloch: Schelomo for solo cello and orchestra John Psathas: Luminous Boris Pigovat: Requiem 'The Holocaust' for solo viola and orchestra

Kenneth Young - conductor Donald Maurice - viola Inbal Megiddo - cello The New Zealand School of Music Orchestra

Music, as a response to conflict and trauma, has the power to express what cannot easily be put into words. It can cross boundaries of language, race, culture and time. Through music, conflicts of the past can be remembered, commemorated and honored by us in the present.

On 29 September 1941, 34000 Jewish civilians were murdered by Nazi forces at Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev, Ukraine. Requiem 'The Holocaust was written by Boris Pigovat in remembrance of his grandparents and aunt who were victims of the massacre.

The concerto also includes Schelomo (Solomon) by Ernest Bloch for solo cello and orchestra, a work written in response to the horrors of World War I. The soloist will be Inbal Megiddo, NZSM's newly appointed lecturer in cello.

Never forget. Never again.

Two other works featuring in the porgramme give a New Zealand context to the theme of facing conflict through music: Anthony Ritchie's Remember Parihaka responds to the 1881 conflict between Taranaki Maori and British soldiers; and John Psathas' Luminous is in memory of a friend overwhelmed by the cultural dislocation she experienced immigrating to this country from China.