This weekend, I’m singing with Highgate Choral Society. They have been established for over 140 years and they have sung in the Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican, and St. Paul’s Cathedral. Their repertoire spans several centuries, from baroque music to new commissions.

Highgate Choral Society are on tour in the Netherlands with a beautiful programme of mostly-English choral music, including Parry, Finzi, and Goss, and also extracts from Duruflé’s Requiem.

I’m very happy to be joining them to sing the Pie Jesu from Duruflé’s Requiem and Dank sei dir, Herr, a song attributed to Handel. Their conductor is Ron Corp and the organist is Edward Batting.

During Easter weekend, I sang for two remembrance ceremonies in northern France.

On 8th April, we gathered to remember the soldiers who fought in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. Most of the soldiers were Canadian. They are commemorated on the Canadian National War Memorial Vimy. Today it is a beautiful, peaceful environment that invites refection on the cost of war. The trees – a whole forest – represent the fallen soldiers, and even with this visual reference it was difficult to grasp the immensity of the loses. The scars of war are still visible in the cratered ground, and even today it is too dangerous to walk in some areas because of unexploded bombs, fatal remnants from a war fought over 100 years ago.

On 9th April, which was Easter Sunday, there was a dawn ceremony at the Wellington Tunnels. These tunnels housed over 24,000 allied soldiers before the Battle of Arras, a battle that claimed nearly 300,000 lives. The soldiers were from Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Pacific Islands. Many of these men and boys would have only a brief glimpse of France before they died or suffered life-changing injuries in a brutal battle.

To acknowledge the Māori miners, the Dutch Waka Crew performed a Haka and presented a Māori song. A prayer was read in Tahitian Māori. I visited New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Tahiti in 2004 in my gap year, and it felt almost absurd that men and boys from these beautiful islands, so remote from Europe, could have perished in northern France.

If you are planning a trip, do consider visiting Arras. Parts of the Wellington Tunnels are open to the public and it is fascinating to experience how the soldiers were accommodated: not only seeing the artefacts, but also feeling the temperature and humidity underground. Vimy Ridge is stunning. Of course it is precisely because of the beautiful, expansive views that it was a tactically-interesting place during the Battle of Arras.

Franz Liszt is perhaps best known for his flamboyant, virtuosic piano music. His Via Crucis is startlingly contrasting, with intimate, simple, serene melodies, and moments of pain that pushed the boundaries of tonality. It has moments of Gregorian chant as well as Lutheran and Bach chorales. I find it inspiring both as a singer and a composer.

On Palm Sunday I will join pianist Willem Brons, the Leidse Cantorij, and conductor Hans Brons to perform Via Crucis in the Hooglandse Kerk to mark the start of Holy Week.

Sunday, 2nd April, 17:00, Hooglandse Kerk, Leiden, the Netherlands

The event is free, with a collection at the end.

I’ve worked with clarinettist John Macfarlane for several years, and together with pianist Hein Putter we formed Trio Colla Voce. Having played both piano and clarinet as a child, the idea of seeking out repertoire for voice, clarinet and piano was very appealing. There are some gems, some well-known, such as Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock, and others relatively obscure.

On Wednesday 29th March we will be performing at Leiden University Medical Centre as part of the Boerhaavepleinconcert series. Our programme includes Mozart’s “Parto, parto” from La Clemenza di Tito and Berceuseby the Dutch romantic composer Alphons Diepenbrock, arranged for basset horn and piano (the original is with ‘cello). We are giving what we believe to be the Dutch première of Michael Head’s The World is Mad. John has composed a piece especially for the trio, Stad in Tijd, on the poem by Henk Gombert. There are also two romantic pieces: Alpenlied by Andreas Spaeth and I Lai by Mariano Obiols.

Wednesday, 29th March, 17:00, LUMC Boerhaaveplein, Leiden, the Netherlands.
The recital, which lasts around half an hour, is free to attend.

In 2019, Han-Louis and I recorded a CD of music from and about the First- and Second World Wars. There is a wealth of beautiful music from this era, including love songs, remembrance songs, and songs to raise morale. It is as if the wars, by highlighting the fragility of life and our vulnerabilities as humans, intensified emotions.

We had planned a tour to launch the CD in 2020 which included performances in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, London, and the Edinburgh Festival. Of course, we wanted to promote our work. I also hoped to show that the music and lyrics from different countries express similar emotions: love, grief, pride in one’s culture. At heart, we are the same, even when our countries are in conflict.

Then there came the pandemic, and for two years we worked on other projects, when it was possible, and “Echoes of War” was put aside.

Last weekend we gave a recital in Vaals, a beautiful town in the south of the Netherlands, next to the German and Belgium borders. It was interesting to revisit the repertoire after a few years. Since recording the CD, there has been the uncertainty caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In my personal life, I got married and we have an infant son, and sadly many of our Second World War veteran friends have passed away. All this has changed my perspective on the repertoire. The patriotic songs feel less comfortable. The songs of loss and love are much closer to heart.

Although it’s very early, I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. 2022 has been a wonderful year, moving from lockdown back to international performances as far away as Mongolia. I was moved to be able to sing for Second World War veterans again in Normandy and the Netherlands, at British, American, French, Dutch and German ceremonies. I sang in Lourdes for the international military pilgrimage, for 25,000 people, which after the lockdown pattern of socially-distanced audiences and live streams was deeply moving. Mongolia was perhaps the highlight of the year, singing for the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation together with a choir children from the Blue Skies Ger Village. Please, if you have a moment, consider supporting the foundation.

I am about to go on maternity leave and should be back at work in the New Year. I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a happy and healthy 2023.

Emma’s setting of “Rorate Caeli,” the introit for the fourth Sunday of Advent, is now available from Edition HH.