Chemin des Dames: Gareth Farr

<p>“I have no concept of what it is like to be involved in war. I can only experience it through their related experience. We have letters from them, very very dry day-to-day nuts and bolts, an insight into how boring it is for them in the trenches waiting and waiting and waiting for days. And then all of a sudden – WHAM !! Everything happens and people start dying. It’s unimaginable.”</p><br><p>In 1917, three New Zealand boys — brothers — were sent to the western front to fight in World War I. They never came home. They died in the Chemin des Dames, a place of legend, now a place of unimaginable horror carved into trenches, where infantry from both sides sheltered in caves. Their names were Charles, Vince, and Frank, and they were the great-great-uncles of Gareth Farr, composer, and percussionist.&nbsp;</p><br><p>When former Adam International Cello Competition winner Sébastien Hurtaud approached Gareth with a proposal he couldn’t resist (“I’ll be your Rostropovich, and you can be my Shostakovich”), Gareth said, “You’re on!”. The result is&nbsp;<em>Cello Concerto ‘Chemin des Dames’</em>, a work that is as much about the men who died fighting WWI as it is about the women who suffered unbearably while looking after the home front.</p><br><p>Host: <a href="https://news.sounz.org.nz/moments-in-time-002" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Charlotte Wilson</a></p><p>Guest:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sounz.org.nz/contributors/1040" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Gareth Farr</a></p><br><p><strong>Links &amp; Resources</strong></p><p>More details on the composer and the associated work are <a href="https://www.sounz.org.nz/works/22937" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p><a href="https://www.sounz.org.nz/resources/20378" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Link to the film of Chemin de Dames</a></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This episode was brought to you by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sounz.org.nz/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">SOUNZ Centre for New Zealand Music.</a></p><br>