On Anzac Weekend (24 and 25 April 2010) Hastings Choristers presented
‘In Flanders Fields’ at Port Macquarie Baptist Church.
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This concert of remembrance honoured lives lost in war and featured the poignantly beautiful Fauré Requiem.
Flanders, a region in Belgium, demonstrates the heavy price of war and is infamous in our wartime history. Despite the destruction and devastation, red poppies which sprang up in the battlefields became symbolic of the shed blood of the fallen.
The sight of poppies at Ypres in 1915 moved Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to write the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ after which our concert is named. The poppy was widely recognised as the flower of remembrance to be worn on Armistice Day and to this day the RSL sells poppies for Remembrance Day to raise funds for its welfare work.
The Fauré Requiem was the cornerstone of the ‘In Flanders Fields’ concert. First performed in 1888, the composer Gabriel Fauré described the work as a ‘lullaby of death’; and it is an expression of his personal loss, as he started it upon the death of his father and his mother died before it was completed. The mood of Fauré’s Requiem is one of peacefulness and serenity, and its very gentleness and understatement goes a long way to explaining its popularity and universal appeal.
Performed by Hastings Choristers Cantorus choir, with the pipe organ accompaniment of Heather Moen-Boyd along with soloists Soprano Rose Wallin and Baritone Joshua Salter, it was impossible not to be moved by the ethereal beauty of this humble masterpiece.
‘In Flanders Fields’ also featured classic choral works relating to the theme of this concert as well as poetry, organ solos and the talented Jason Heise on trumpet.
