I went to a very memorable and moving ANZAC Eve Remembrance Concert on Saturday night.
The music played and sung included Amazing Grace (truly amazing), Ave Maria (tear jerking and spine chilling from the beautifully eerie and powerful voice of Suzanne Kompass), Abide With Me and Dam Busters March to name just four of a beautifully powerful programme that included poems, The Beach Burial, beautiful and yet so brutal and then to the haunting sound of the bagpipes and the bugler playing The Last Post.
Goose bumps and large lumps in your throat seemed to be the order of the evening. So sad and so beautiful. So sad because what a waste, all those lives, never will they have seen what they could have become, what their country became, never could their love-ones comprehend the way or place in which they died. So beautiful because of the incredible music, thought provoking, enchanting, so forceful and yet so pitiful.
The concert was an inspiring and sober event. Strange how you can describe and act in two opposite meaning and descriptive words, yet both are accurate. Why does a remembrance day event evoke such dynamically opposite emotions? Maybe it’s all our guilt. We know we should remember the dead who fought for us, but at the same time, what a waste of life, so the act in itself is futile, because we shouldn’t have to remember them, not in this way, because they shouldn’t be dead. What did war ever achieve for mankind? Blood-shed and waste? Greed and power? Who pays the price? And why should they?
It was a beautiful evening of music and talented people.
Lest we forget – and we never should.
Performed by incredible musicians and coral choirs from:
- Queensland Symphony Orchestra
- Queensland Police Pipes & Drums
- Australian Army Band Brisbane, Fanfare Team and Bugler
- The Queensland Choir
- University of Queensland Chorale
- So-la Voce Choir
- Suzanne Kompass – soprano
