Soldiers’ lament

A martial snare drum, thunderous percussion and agitated strings set the scene in Michael Williams’ 1st Symphony Letters from the front. The music reflects the terrors and tragedies of war and this New Zealand composer’s sure sense of drama is immediately apparent. Commissioned by the NZSO as one of several new symphonic works for WW1 commemorations in New Zealand, Letters from the front looks back to Gallipoli in 1915. A CD recording of the three-movement symphony has now been released, giving a welcome longer life to a powerful musical statement.

In Letters from the front Williams weaves music around evocative historical texts. The first movement quotes a song by English composer George Butterworth, one of his settings of A.E. Housman’s famous poetry from A Shropshire Lad. Sadly, Butterworth himself died on the Somme in 1916, aged 31. The second movement includes readings of poignant letters to his children from William’s own great-grandfather, killed at Passchendaele in 1917. The third is based around Wilfred Owen’s poem, Arms and the Boy, and also quotes from soldiers’ letters and journal entries from Gallipoli, Belgium and France.                  

Soprano Madeleine Pierard’s beautiful emotion-laden voice is a perfect choice for a young soldier’s lament against high keening strings.  In the 2nd movement her Latin text translates a soldier’s letter to his mother: “My heart is so shattered I don't know whether it is broken or not.” Pierard’s soaring soprano is almost overwhelmed by huge orchestral forces in a ferocious climax before she completes the symphony alone with tragic lines from Owen’s iconic poem; “Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade/How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood.”

Composer Michael Williams

…deeply personal music

Williams does not back off from the horrors of war but reveals their raw power in deeply personal music. Using a wide range of orchestral colours with transparency and flair, his 30-minute symphony is compelling and intense, while the NZSO under conductor Benjamin Northey is virtuosic in strident brass, nostalgic woodwind, urgent strings and flurries of percussion. The work is great addition to our orchestral canon, and this release whets the appetite for another live performance.

Letters from the Front Symphony No.1 Michael F. Williams NZSO Benjamin Northey (conductor) Madeleine Pierard (soprano) Paul Gittins (narrator) Atoll

 This review was first published in the NZ Listener February 2021