By John Nathan
3 min read
By John Nathan
Some works of art were just meant to be. Five decades ago, way before Carl Davis became known for music compositions that became lodged in the public consciousness - among them the theme to the ultimate documentary series, The World at War and the score for the unforgettable movie, The French Lieutenant's Woman - he decided that Vienna was not for him. He had moved there from his native New York to become a maestro in the Viennese tradition.
But this was the 1960s, and the realisation dawned that, in cultural terms, the most exciting city in Europe was not Vienna, but London, where Joan Littlewood was redefining musical theatre.
So Davis scraped together enough money to travel from Austria to England. But he only had enough for a train. It took 36 hours, but the journey changed his life forever, just as, under very different circumstances, it changed the lives of thousands of Jewish children before him.
These days, Davis is an award-winning conductor and composer, and from the perspective of the languid luxury of his club in London where we meet to talk about Sunday's concert, he can see how that train journey was one of many events in his life that prepared him to compose Last Train To Tomorrow.
The work is a song cycle inspired by the Kindertransport - the train journeys that in 1938 and 1939 saved over 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazis. The work was commissioned by the Halle Orchestra for its children's choir.
"The brief was nothing other than 'here's the orchestra and here's the choir'," says Davis who speaks in a cultured mid-Atlantic drawl and in almost concerto-length paragraphs. A black coffee cools in front of him, unsipped.
"I'm thinking of theme all the time, I don't really write abstract music. I'm more turned on by history or film and literature. And I just had this flash while looking at the Bridgewater Hall [where the work was first seen in Manchester in 2012]. It's basically a shoe-box shape, and the choir is always at the end. They stand in a long line staring out into the black void of the audience. The hall is about the width of a train carriage and I just suddenly thought, 'What is a story of children in trains? Where do the two come together?' And then it came - the Kindertransport, where for 36 hours Jewish children were locked into train carriages and were not let out until they were out of Germany, or out of danger. That's how it began."
The performance on Sunday at North London's Roundhouse is presented by - and raising funds for - the Association of Jewish Refugees, and the evening will be introduced by television presenter Natasha Kaplinsky who is also a member of the David Cameron's Holocaust Commission.
The piece is a 10-song sequence that charts the personal histories, hopes and fears of the trains' special cargo. The words for the choral work are by children's poet and author Hiawyn Oram. And they superbly capture not only the emotions of the children but their psychology, too. The piece, which will be performed by the London Sinfonia and the Finchley Children's Music Group, is timed to coincide with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of destruction that presaged the Nazi's onslaught against German Jews, and ultimately the Holocaust.
"I was born in New York in 1936. I was reading newspaper headlines by the time I was four years old. And so I've always had this fascination with World War II and the events leading up to it. New York was in some ways a very Jewish city. But there were different kinds of Jews. I was third generation American. My parents were born in America. It was the grandparents who were immigrants. But entering the music and theatre scene in London in 1960, it was simply impossible not to meet somebody who wasn't a Kinder."
The architect Edward Mendelshon was one. He once told Davis how his parents took him to a Viennese cobblers to have a fake heel made for his shoe in which they hid a ring. This and other real-life memories, including the sense of abandonment when the parents left their children at the station, are included in the narrative for Last Train to Tomorrow.
The subject is still alive for the work's creator because he keeps encountering new Kinder. Two years ago in Florida, where he hopes to perform the piece, he met a group who survived the war because their parents had put them on trains departing from Prague, Vienna or Berlin.
"They're all in their 80s now but the burning issue for them, which seems unbelievable, was 'How could they do that to us?' Not the Germans - the parents.
"And no matter how loudly you say, 'To save your life,' they remain stuck, like hamsters on a wheel, unable to come to terms with the separation."
'Last Train To Tomorrow' will be performed at The Roundhouse on Sunday November 9 at 3pm
