AWE Festival
London 2026
20-24 April
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
General Admission: £35
Food and wine available throughout the night
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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
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Benjamin Baker - violin
Yura Lee - viola
Maciej Kułakowski - cello
Louis Schwizgebel - piano
Ruairi Bowen - tenor -
Fidelio Cafe
91-95 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5BXDoors 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 sets 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 completes 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
General Admission: £35
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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
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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 explores 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.
Salina Fisher’s Kintsugi reflects on the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, celebrating fractures for the unique history they represent.
Sebastian Black’s new work for solo violin then tells 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 closes 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 will spend two days performing for school groups around London.