For musical director Chris Latham, his Flowers of War project is founded on a desire to curate a series of concerts about the power of recovery after loss. By performing the musical scores he has searched for and restored to the musical community, Latham hopes that these works will salvage something deeply meaningful from the crisis of war into which the young composers were hurled. In hearing the potential and the beauty expressed in their music, audiences experience a temporary resurrection of lost musical talent. Latham's message is that these works "straddle the river between us and the Great War's dead, speaking to us so that we might learn and not make the same mistakes again".

This call to remember the lessons of the past is timely in an era when funding has been so savagely reduced for the Australian cultural institutions that safeguard the nation's memory and for educational institutions that teach how to find the truth about historical events.

The program was structured around the works of a French, a German and an Australian composer: Claude Duboscq, Botho Sigwart zu Eulrnberg and Frederick Septimus Kelly. Duboscq's compositions embody the physical and psychological trauma he suffered on the battlefield, although he lived until 1938. Dating mainly from 1918, the songs and piano works express a wistful striving for reconciliation with lost hopes and a search for meaning, such as L'inquiétude de Dieu and Prière pour avoir une femme simple. The items in this bracket and throughout the concert were nicely contrasted with the alternation of performers Christina Wilson, soprano and Louise Page, mezzo soprano; and pianists Alan Hicks and Tamara-Anna Chislowska.

Botho Sigwart zu Eulenberg wrote prolifically prior to World War I and like Frederick Septimus Kelly, wrote his last composition on the battlefield. The first two songs and the Christmas Sonata in A Major Op. 14 – The Adoration of the Shepherds, were a revelation. Beautifully crafted and exploring the full potential of the soprano voice, these pieces captured the spirit of a young composer who should have had a significant career.

Kelly has become familiar to many Canberrans through Latham's concerted effort to make the composer part of the canon. The Elegy for Rupert Brooke , arranged by Calvin Bowman, Alan Hicks and Latham for violin and piano shone as the jewel in the bracket. Including the unfinished 1916 Piano Sonata in F Minor and the ghostly rendition of Has Anyone Here Seen Kelly? by Christina Wilson were poignant touches. My one criticism is that the evening was a little too long. With judicious reduction of each bracket, the overall impact of the music would be more powerful. That said, Latham is to be congratulated for steadfastly adhering to his quest to make audiences aware of the treasures bequeathed to us by exceptionally talented young men who died too young.