Intimacy, intensity and interiority.
This chamber music concert brought together three of “my favourite things,” to quote Julie Andrews. Music, architecture, and elevated views of London. That’s because the New Zealand-based companies at the World’s Edge Festival London were given access to the Clock Tower of St Pancras Station, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s 1868 Grade I listed gothic masterpiece. It’s now a private apartment created by the Manhattan Loft Company. The owners offered the company the opportunity to play inside their home. What a wondrous experience. The Chamber Music concert took place in the room on the fifth floor just below the Clockface. It has gothic arched window frames looking east over King’s Cross station and up Pentonville Road and looking south towards the City, St Paul’s Cathedral and The Shard. There could hardly be a more magical setting for such a concert. As the space contains a grand piano, there was just about room for the three musicians and an audience of twenty lucky souls. It was a wonderful occasion which will stay with me forever.
The New Zealand company AWE (at the world’s edge) is touring the world and are in London this week. They gave a concert on Monday at the Fidelio Cafe and last night at St Pancras Clock Tower. For the rest of this week, they will be performing in schools and other community spaces. Last night’s concert was around the themes of Service, Remembrance and Endurance. With ANZAC Day at the forefront of their mission, AWE are committed to keeping alive the memory of the men who died at Gallipoli. This disastrous campaign was an ill-thought-out attempt to open the straits of the Dardanelles in the face of fierce Turkish resistance. Many thousands of ANZAC soldiers lost their lives. Perhaps the Americans should think about this before they attempt a similar campaign in the Straits of Hormuz? Just saying. Making a nod to the colours of their world-famous rugby team, all the musicians were wearing black from head to toe. The All Blacks, as it were. To give the sacrifice at Gallipoli a focus, the concert homes in on the life of Alexander Aitken (1896-1967), a violinist, Poet, mathematician, and soldier. His memoir, Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand Infantryman, provides the context for the works played last night. Alexander had a violin which he kept with him all through the First World War. He played it to his comrades and they liked especially Dvorak’s Humoresque. He was wounded at the Somme and returned to New Zealand. He thought he had lost his violin, but his comrades took care of it and returned it to him. He donated the violin to Otago Boys’ School, where it remains to this day. A testimony to the power of music to transcend the horror of war.
Talking of Otago Boys School and the violin leads nicely into the first piece, Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folk Song for cello and piano, for on the cello was the young scholar, Jack Moyer. He has been generously funded by the AWE and others. A wonderful example of the tradition being handed down to future generations. Jack played with sensitivity, nuance, and sophisticated way beyond his years. The second piece was the world premiere of Sebastian Black’s Aitken’s Violin, named obviously for Alexander Aitken. This piece for solo violin was performed by Benjamin Black as Yura Lee was unavailable. Clearly, this piece was evoking the horrors of the First World War, so very appropriately, the note struck was one of dissonance, dislocation and disruption. Think of the music as the shower scene in Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” and you will be on the right lines. I found it difficult to take, but it was searingly powerful and necessary. The last two pieces were performed by the same trio of Benjamin Baker – violin, Maciej Kulakowski – cello, and Daniel Lebhardt – piano. First, they performed Salina Fisher’s Kintsugi – a Japanese way of repairing broken pottery with gold, thus highlighting rather than concealing fracture. What it found most affecting about this piece was the way the musicians displayed a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-like ability to change from gentle Zen Buddhist calm to frenzied manic aggression in a heartbeat. This memorable performance ended with Maurice Ravel’s Piano Trio in A minor, written just before the war broke out on the 1st August 1914. Setting up the competitive incompatibility of the piano’s percussive iterations and the implacable tones of the strings, the trio create an alluring, alarming and austere soundscape which presciently foreshadows the horrors about to be unleashed. The company at the world’s edge have most emphatically delivered on their mission to keep the memory of the ANZAC generation alive.
Review by John O’Brien
Perched above central London, this programme explores the Anzac values of service, remembrance and endurance. Vaughan Williams, passionate about preserving folk melodies, treats them here with love, an act of cultural service that preserves these tunes and the communities that carried them.
Salina Fisher’s Kintsugi reflects on the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, celebrating fractures for the unique history they represent.
Sebastian Black’s new work for solo violin then tells the story of Alexander Aitken’s violin, gifted to him on his voyage to fight in the First World War, played for his comrades at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, then lost at the Somme, but not forever.
Ravel’s Piano Trio closes AWE London 2026, completed in 1914 as the outbreak of war spurred him on to finish the work before enlisting.
SERVICE, REMEMBRANCE & ENDURANCE
Part of AWE Festival London 2026
21 April 2026
