BBC Singers and Voices New Zealand

The BBC Singers join forces with one of the finest choirs of the southern hemisphere, Voices New Zealand, for a concert celebrating choral music from Australia and New Zealand with European influences.

Together the choirs perform works by Anthony Ritchie and Bach, and the world premiere of a new work by New Zealand composer Takerei Komene. Ranginui, sung in Te Reo Māori, narrates the heartbreak of Ranginui, the Sky Father, and Papatūānuku, the Earth Mother, as they are separated at the dawn of creation.

Musicians from Aurora Orchestra join for the heart of the programme: Robert Wiremu’s Erebus: Reimagining Mozart, which commemorates the Air New Zealand Flight TE901 disaster, which crashed into Mount Erebus in Antarctica in November 1979. Wiremu weaves a touching narrative around the event by imagining that fragments of Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, perhaps carried on a personal cassette player, are scattered by the wind across the Antarctic landscape at the moment of impact. The piece incorporates elements of the original Requiem but presents them in a fragmented and altered way, reflecting the tragedy of the air disaster.

There will be one interval.