2025 – Last Train to Tomorrow, composed by Carl Davis, at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, 2025.

To mark the 10th anniversary of Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day, this incredibly moving musical piece, written by Carl Davis, returned to the stage at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, in January 2025

To mark the 10th anniversary of Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day and the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz the ‘Last train to tomorrow’ written by Carl Davis was performed on the 27th and 28th of January 2025. 

The musical was first performed by the Charity in 2016 at Chichester Cathedral with Carl himself conducting a Chichester University orchestra and a cast of local school children. The performance attracted an audience of over 500 people.

Almost a decade later this was the first time the piece has been performed since Carl’s death in 2023, and his daughter Jessie was our guest of honour. It is a musical piece that tells the story of the flight of 10,000 children from atrocities in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Some of the children were put on Kindertransport rescue trains from Prague to London in 1938/39 organised by Sir Nicholas Winton, and made it to safety leaving their families to face the fate of the death camps.

There were 3 performances at The Minerva Theatre, Chichester with professional musicians conducted by the renowned composer Howard Moody accompanied by singers from local schools. Our aim was to provide local school children with the opportunity to perform, both singing and acting, a renowned musical piece and to experience working with professional musicians in a professional theatre setting. Over 800 people attended and the cast and musicians received standing ovations.

Last Train to Tomorrow in the words of Carl Davis (Composer)
In 2009 the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester approached me to write a work for their whiz-bang Children’s Choir. My answer was an immediate ‘yes’ and an idea followed swiftly. I had in mind the underlying theme of the Kindertransport Movement of 1938-39 – children abandoned and saved by a quirk of history. The shape of the choir stalls at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall seemed to echo the dimensions of a railway carriage. When filled with a hundred or so children it could recreate the critical scenes from the Kindertransport story – the rescue by train from three key cities, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, of thousands of Jewish children from inevitable death at the hands of the Nazis, to safety in England.

How to tell the story? Spoken narrative seemed obvious but perhaps a more original way would be to have the children themselves tell what happened to them. I turned to an experienced writer of children’s books, Hiawyn Oram, who had previously collaborated with me on musicals and songs specifically for children to perform. We were both very moved by the story and at times could barely talk about it for emotion but we both set to work reading purposefully the many accounts written by survivors. What evolved was a sequence of songs (we looked carefully at Schubert’s song cycles) each of which moves the story further along. The events that preceded the train journey from the three cities to London’s Liverpool Street Station are told in flashback, young actors linking the set pieces with historical context. The work ends with the arrival of the children at Liverpool Street Station as they face a new life in England.

Writing the Music. Now what about the music? First, the sound; I wanted to limit the range of sonorities, a sort of black and white feel, so no woodwinds or brass. I chose strings, percussion and piano four hands – the stark line-up present in many interwar concert works. And the style? I thought of what music the children might know from their life before the journey. Of course they would have heard, and the older children played, the classical masters but also the popular music of the day, sometimes rather Broadway-ish, as well as Jewish songs, hinting at tragic separation and tempered with humour and I knew the work had to end optimistically in a major key. After all, thanks to the British, these children were saved from the camps, a cause for celebration.

After the Manchester premiere in 2012, the second performance was in Prague in 2013. The orchestra was the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the choir, the Children’s Opera Prague. The work was translated into Czech and brilliantly sung and staged. Following a hunch I asked if they sang in English. ‘Yes we can’ was the reply and I then decided that there might be an additional level of authenticity in recording the ‘Last Train…’ with them, Czech children singing in English.

Writing the words. Carl approached me in 2009 after the Hallé Orchestra had asked him to conceive and compose a work for their Children’s Choir. His chosen subject was the Kindertransport Movement of 1938-39 and it was going to need words, he said, spoken and sung.

I knew little about the subject but in the first weeks of researching, reading personal accounts and watching a remarkable Academy Award- winning film, ‘INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS,’ I became so distressed that I was on the verge of saying I couldn’t do it. I pulled myself up and together, over many months during which I discovered he was equally disturbed by the survivors’ stories, we managed to get our emotions sufficiently under control to create what has become LAST TRAIN – a dramatic narrative for Children’s Choir, Actors and Orchestra.

It was a charged and wonderful experience working with Carl. His innate sense of theatre and the language of his composition and orchestrations add levels and meaning to words and story which can take the breath away. Tears may have been spilled writing LAST TRAIN but nothing can come close to the suffering of the young people who survived Nazi persecution and sudden separation from their families. I only hope we’ve captured something of it in this re-telling.

Hiawyn Oram London 2014

Chichester Marks Holocaust Memorial Day
Since 2016 we have worked to mark and keep memories alive with a variety of activities including screenings, talks and community-based performance for people of all ages and backgrounds. We work in partnership with schools, community groups and organisations – including Chichester Cathedral, the University of Chichester, Chichester Festival Theatre and Chichester City Council We have been proud to stage Howard Moody’s opera PUSH, featuring local choirs, the story of a young boy pushed by his Mother from a train bound for Auschwitz in order to save his life. PUSH was performed in Chichester Cathedral, Chichester Theatre and The House of Commons. In addition we have bought The Mozart Question by Sir Michael Morpugo, Women Who Resisted by Kate Mosse and Kate Mosse in conversation with David Nott (world renowned surgeon in war zones) to an ever increasing audience in Chichester.

Our over-riding theme for our theatre production, film screenings and workshops will be The Holocaust Memorial Trust’s theme for 2025 – ‘For a Better Future’.