At the World’s Edge London

An annual spring festival of chamber music, At the World’s Edge is forging new creative pathways between Aotearoa New Zealand and London UK.

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AWE Festival
London 2026

20-24 April

Programme Booklet

Memories in Sound

From Aotearoa New Zealand, in the heart of London

Tracing a journey towards Anzac day, exploring the core values of Anzac spirit: Courage, Sacrifice, Service, Comradeship or Mateship, Remembrance and Endurance.

1 | Courage, Sacrifice & Mateship

Monday 20 April, 6:30pm
Fidelio Cafe

    • Gideon Klein String Trio

    • Ross Harris Notes from the Front (Songs for Corporal Aitken) for tenor, violin and piano

    • Antonin Dvořák Piano Quartet No.2 in E-flat Major, op.87 

  • Benjamin Baker - violin
    Yura Lee - viola
    Maciej Kułakowski - cello
    Louis Schwizgebel - piano
    Ruairi Bowen - tenor

  • Fidelio Cafe
    91-95 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BX

    Doors open at 6:00 pm for drinks and snacks. The performance will start promptly at 6:30 pm.

    Food and wine will be available to purchase throughout the night.

Exploring the ANZAC values of courage, remembrance, sacrifice and mateship, Gideon Klein’s String Trio is a unique example of artistic resolve in the most challenging circumstances. Completed in the Terezín concentration camp just days before Klein’s deportation to Auschwitz, it launches our journey from ground level, music as witness and legacy.

Ross Harris’s Notes from the Front then set the wartime letters of New Zealand soldier, musician and mathematician Alexander Aitken, honouring his personal voice as an act of remembrance, and bringing the human reality of service and sacrifice into sharp focus.

Dvořák’s vivid Piano Quartet No. 2 completed the programme. Written at a moment when international success was increasingly drawing him away from home, the work remains rooted in the Czech musical spirit that was becoming integral to Czech national identity, and in the chamber music ideal of four voices in conversation, interdependent, equal and moving forward together.

2 | Service, Remembrance & Endurance

Tuesday 21 April, 7pm
St. Pancras Clock Tower

    • Vaughan WilliamsSix studies in English Folk Song

    • Sebastian Black (NZ/UK) Aitken’s Violin, AWE Commission and World Premiere*

    • Salina Fisher (NZ) Kintsugi for violin, cello and piano

    • Maurice Ravel Piano Trio

    *Commissioned with support from Lord and Lady Strasburger and Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas DBE

  • Benjamin Baker - violin
    Yura Lee - violin
    Maciej Kułakowski - cello
    Jack Moyer - cello (AWE Scholar)
    Daniel Lebhardt - piano

  • St. Pancras Clock Tower
    St. Pancras Chambers, Euston Rd, London NW1 2AR

    (Located next to St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel London, Euston Rd, Kings Cross, London NW1 2AR)

Perched above central London, this programme explored the Anzac values of service, remembrance and endurance. Vaughan Williams, passionate about preserving folk melodies, treats them here with love, an act of cultural service that preserves these tunes and the communities that carried them.

SalinaFisher’s Kintsugi reflects on the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, celebrating fractures for the unique history they represent.

SebastianBlack’s new work for solo violin then told the story of Alexander Aitken’s violin, gifted to him on his voyage to fight in the First World War, played for his comrades at Gallipoli and on the Western Front, then lost at the Somme, but not forever. Read more about this commission and Alexander Aitken here.

Ravel’s Piano Trio closed AWE London 2026, completed in 1914 as the outbreak of war spurred him on to finish the work before enlisting.

AWE+ in the Community

Following our two public performances, AWE Festival Artists spent two days performing for school groups around London.