Watford Philharmonic Society (WPS) are performing a very special Remembrance concert on 29 October with the famous Western Front Violin
The programme includes music reflecting on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and features an unique violin on loan from the Imperial War Museum. Made by former WPS orchestra leader Kenneth Popplewell in 1983 the instrument is known as The Western Front violin and is crafted from timber from the former WW1 battlefields, decorated with crossed poppies on its tailpiece, carved with the inscription Remembering 1914/18.
The pine was selected from trees growing along the river Somme and sycamore from Bois Quarante, three miles south of Ypres through which the German front line ran from 1914 – 1917
These two woody areas were scenes of some of the bitterest conflicts of the war and were literally just shattered stumps protruding from a devastated and shell-pitted terrain
Current WPS orchestra leader, Jeanne Mann will be playing a short solo piece (Méditation from the opera Thäis by Massenet) on the Western Front Violin at the concert. The programme also includes the Bruch Violin Concerto and the Mozart Requiem as well as the orchestral suite A Shropshire Lad by George Butterworth and a choral version of the Saving Private Ryan theme, composed by John Williams. The choir, orchestra and soloists will be conducted by Michael Cayton.