“LOVE it is not forever, not in the biting cold: for how can the saplings blossom with so much snow to hold?” German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote in his famous poem, “Kinderkreuzzug,” (The Children’s Crusade) written in 1939 about children who became orphaned by war.

One of the centrepieces in the coming Canberra International Music Festival, Benjamin Britten’s pacifist composition, “The Children’s Crusade,”  was inspired by Brecht’s  poem, and will be sung by Luminescence Children’s Choir.

Complementing  the festival’s theme, “The Child Within”, it tells the story of 55 children orphaned at the outbreak of war in Poland in 1939 traversing the snow and battling the raging blizzards together as they search for a land where peace reigns.

To set the scene for the Britten, Irish-Australian actor Christopher Samuel Carroll will recite Brecht’s  poem “The Children’s Crusade” in English.

“I’m a big fan of both Britten and Brecht and this is an amazing piece of work,” Luminescence director AJ America tells me. “It’s a serious work, but it shows you the way kids will always search for the good for something that is better.”

It’s hardly a laugh-a-minute, but it’s very powerful, America says. “It tells the story of the way the children search for peace and there is no sense that it is hopeless.”

From a different perspective as director of the auditioned choir, there’s another plus.

“This is a real landmark for a Canberra choir to take on a work that so far has only been performed by ensemble like the Gondwana Choirs… It’s a really big work and our choir is capable of really doing it justice.”

America believes it’s a big deal for ACT music, so people could come and see what Canberra children are doing.

There are 27 people in the choir this time round, she says, and it’s backed by a formidable ensemble that includes some Luminescence alumni.

Here the full line-up for the night — Sally Walker, flute James Wannan, viola Stephanie and Edward Neeman, piano Veronica Milroy, organ Veronica Bailey, Thomas Chalker, Valdas Cameron, Oliver Feitz, Demi Katheklakis and Emma Piva, percussion.

“This piece has been on my wish list for a long time and it was one of the first things I ever did when I joined the Sydney Children’s Choir’s senior ensemble,” America says. “The work is not sentimental, but it’s full of hope, it feels as if Britten was writing a work about conflict of a struggle, but also about the search for peace.

“The piece left such an impression on me, there was a real sense that it was a privilege to tell this story. The children become sort of narrators as they describe the different characters.

“It’s not an easy work. It’s pretty gritty and it’s a big musical challenge, but it’s so beautiful.”

The recital of the Britten does not form the only activity of the evening, which opens with Maurice Ravel’s 1910 “Mother Goose Suite” and concludes with Sam Weiss’s poignant 2021 work , “Deine Mami” (Your Mami), written by his great-grandmother on her daughter Nelly’s seventh birthday in 1936 and found recently in a diary at Sydney Jewish Museum.

Concert 13, Canberra International Music Festival, “The Children’s Crusade,” Fitters’ Workshop, Kingston, 7.30pm, May 4.