BBC Proms: Season 2016, Episode 5

2016 - 5: A Child of Our Time

Michael Tippett's secular oratorio A Child of Our Time is his most widely performed work. It is an impassioned protest against persecution and tyranny with an overriding message of peace.

Renowned British baritone and composer Roderick Williams takes a look at the story behind A Child Of Our Time and introduces conductor Mark Wigglesworth, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales and soloists Tamara Wilson (soprano), Susan Bickley (mezzo-soprano), Peter Hoare (tenor) and James Creswell (bass).

In 1938 a young Polish Jew, whose parents were deported by the Nazis, shot a German diplomat in Paris. The Nazis seized on the assassination to rile Hitler's supporters into an anti-Semitic frenzy.

Tippett shared the public horror at the events that followed and in 1939 began writing a musical protest, a work that expressed deep rage at the unprecedented crimes being committed by the Nazi regime, and despair at man's ability to commit acts of inhumanity.