A Child of Our Time

A Child of Our Time Photo: Supplied

The New Zealand Youth Choir and Voices New Zealand Chamber Choir join the Auckland Philharmonia to perform Michael Tippett’s anti-war oratorio, A Child of our Time.

The child of the title was a Jewish boy whose desperate murder of a German official in Paris sparked the violent Kristallnacht pogroms of the Nazis.

Tippett responded with a musical narrative that moves from dark beginnings to an optimistic recognition of human resilience and our universal capacity for compassion. 

Five spirituals boldly reinforce the plight of persecuted peoples worldwide. These have taken on a life of their own with vocalists around the world performing them in unaccompanied versions.

More than 70 years have passed since A Child of our Time was first performed in 1944, yet the power and immediacy of the music and the message remain.

Recorded in the Auckland Town Hall by Radio New Zealand