A Child of Our Time BBC Proms

Good evening and welcome to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

Tonight's performance is Sir Michael's Tippett's seminal

work - A Child of Our Time.

This is music at its most politically aware - an impassioned

protest against persecution.

Tippett was warning us against a world "that has

turned on its dark side".

His plea is as relevant today as it was then.

Welcome to the Proms.

Michael Tippett was a wonderful, humane composer and

an intellectual giant.

The mild-mannered gentleman of his later years,

with his flamboyant dress sense and joie de vivre gave little clues

to the brave battles he had fought in his youth.

Brave is an understatement.

As a young, gay man in the 1930s he struggled with his sexuality,

campaigned for universal music education and was

an unwavering pacifist -

during World War II.

The work you're about to hear is based on real world events,

and serves as a warning to the world.

We're looking at the abyss - Hiroshima.

- as Plato thought - heal us, put the balance back,

that's enough to do, come on.

A Child of Our Time was triggered by real events in Europe, 1938.

On a cold November morning, a young Jewish boy named

Herschel Grynszpan left his cheap hotel room in Paris.

He'd been living in France as an illegal immigrant

and was scared for his family back in Germany.

He purchased a gun and 25 bullets.

He walked into the German embassy and shot dead a Nazi diplomat.

The Nazis seized on the assassination.

Hitler's supporters were riled into an anti-Semitic frenzy.

The result was Kristallnacht.

Nazi mobs torched and vandalized synagogues, Jewish homes,

schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries

throughout Germany.

Tippett looked on, horrified.

He felt he needed to act.

When war finally broke out on 3rd September 1939,

he took action, even though he refused to bear arms.

Instead he sat down at the piano and he told Herschel's story

through music.

Herschel's role, sung tonight by the tenor Peter Hoare,

is titled in the score simply as "the boy".

Any one of us can identify with that boy - rudderless, angry,

and desperate enough to commit murder - and also with the child's

mother, who tries to come to terms with the result of his actions.

I had to sing, always ever anew.

I have to sing as Blake put it - no longer the songs of innocence,

but the songs of experience.

But sing I shall.

Tippett's thoroughly modern take on the oratorio actually followed

fairly classical models and he chose to punctuate the work

with American spirituals, much in the way composers like Bach

used Lutheran chorales in their Passion settings.

It was a controversial move.

Tippett deliberately wanted to appeal to everyone around

the world - regardless of creed, race, or religion - although mixing

African American spirituals with high art raised a few eyebrows.

I always get a particular chill

down my spine during the bass solo.

The pride and the protest mix together in this most

powerful of spirituals.

A Child of Our Time is chillingly prophetic, its message

enduring and universal.

And yet, Tippett never gave up on us.

He saw both the good and bad within humanity.

And out of the darkness of troubled times, he miraculously

ended this work in hope.

"I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last

behold".

And if that is the personal, one single person, then we might

all be able to say for one moment - "it is spring".

APPLAUSE

Tonight's performance features, the BBC National Orchestra

and Chorus of Wales, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

They are joined by soloists Mezzo soprano, Susan Bickley,

appearing also as the Aunt.

Soprano, Tamara Wilson, singing Mother.

Bass James Creswell as Narrator and also the Uncle.

And Tenor Peter Hoare as Boy.

'S

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales, 'S conducted by Mark Wigglesworth.

BBC National Chorus of Wales, chorus-master James Henshaw

The soloists were, Susan Bickley - Mezzo soprano.

Soprano, Tamara Wilson.

James Creswell, bass.

And Tenor, Peter Hoare.

Goodnight.