Prof Ritchie’s Gallipoli to the Somme was voted New Zealand’s most popular piece in RNZ Concert’s Settling the Score 2020 contest at the end of last month, marking the first time a New Zealand composer has won the competition.
Prof Ritchie said he was hopeful at the time he composed the piece it would strike a chord with audiences, but he was careful too in covering the subject of war.
"I think the First World War more than any seemed like a futile war. It was hard to say who was right and who was wrong, if you like, and there was a lot of despair about the waste of life and the waste of fine young people, and all that carnage," he said.
"The main message I had was that these were ordinary people going out and being faced with a nightmare of a situation with all the machinery and the technology that killed people in the millions."
Commissioned by the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, the work premiered in 2016 as part of the Dunedin Arts Festival.
The winning performance featured Anna Leese (soprano), Martin Snell (bass), City Choir Dunedin and the Southern Youth Choir, along with the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Over.
Prof Ritchie said the quality of the performance was "outstanding".
"That made it — not just me."
