Who knows - and apart from people in Switzerland, whoever did know - that until 1960, Switzerland ran a national system which was little short of child slavery?
Known as Verdingkinder, these ‘contract children’ were often removed from their families and used as cheap workers on farms in rural areas, where they were often severely maltreated.
This well-hidden strand of history has now become - via a circuitous route - the seed for a remarkable new ‘cantata for suffering children’ entitled Phoenix from the Ashes, which will get its premiere at Cadogan Hall on November 6th.
Lucy Crowe and Roderick Williams will be the distinguished soloists, with Highgate Choral Society and the London Chorus in support, and all under the baton of Ronald Corp, who is also the new work’s composer.
Sonja Roston Johnson was a long-term and enthusiastic member of the Highgate Choral Society, died in October 2021.
Her husband, Mark, and Ronald Corp met to discuss writing a work dedicated to her memory.
"Because of her childhood experience in the Swiss Verdingkinder system," says Corp, "and because the world continues to be confronted with distressing instances of the suffering of children, we chose this as the thematic basis of the cantata texts as it is, tragically, perennially relevant."
Corp went away after that first meeting, wondering where he could find a text, and thinking that perhaps Dickens would provide something relevant, or maybe Dostoyevsky.
"But luckily," he says, "I shared this conundrum with the poet and author Diana Jones, some of whose poems I had previously set to music, and she came back very quickly with a complete libretto, a wonderful juxtaposition of poetic texts which to my mind are pertinent, without being too local-specific."
Corp had indeed struck gold. The poetry is by Rudyard Kipling, Louis Macniece, Emily Dickinson, Robert Graves, and Edward Thomas, with poems by Diana Jones threaded through, and purely as literature the effect is haunting.
But when set to Corp’s mercurial score, that effect is vastly amplified.
"The libretto was a real inspiration," Corp says, "I greatly enjoyed reflecting on these texts in music."
This event will have a very personal significance for him, as it marks 40 years since he was appointed musical director of the Highgate Choral Society.
A celebratory concert had been mooted, and Corp was delighted to find that two other anniversaries could help this programme to come together: the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Holst’s birth, and the centenary of the death of Gabriel Fauré.
The concert will conclude with a performance of that composer’s passionate Requiem.
"But it’s important," says Corp, "to stress that the final section of my cantata is a statement of triumph over adversity. I hope the final line, 'my life’s my own', truly represents the phoenix which has risen from the ashes."
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