WAR REQUIEM
CBSO at Coventry Cathedral *****
Sixty-four
years ago a 14-year-old schoolboy was doing his homework in the breakfast-room
of his Brighton home, and the radio was relaying a gripping new work. That boy
was me, and the new work was Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, its premiere being
broadcast live from the brand-new Coventry Cathedral, built alongside the ruins
of its medieval predecessor, smashed by German bombers during World War II.
The orchestra
then was the CBSO, and this year the orchestra returned to the Cathedral on
Armistice Day to replicate that historic performance, and now with a poignant
addition. Britten’s concept had been that the soloists should hail from the
three antagonistic nations, England, Germany and Russia. Now we also had a
fourth antagonistic nation (admittedly in World War II, while Britten’s work is
rooted in the Great War), represented by Japanese conductor Kazuki Yamada, and
this performance proved his greatest triumph yet with his orchestra.
I listened to
the live Radio 3 relay, and the broadcast sound was infinitely better than
would have been experienced by the sellout audience in the Cathedral’s
notoriously problematic acoustic. Full marks to the BBC engineers, and to
announcer Mark Forrest, who painted an aural picture for us, soprano Olga Peretyako
high up amid the main choir, children’s chorus far away by the altar at the
other end of the nave, and tenor Andrew Staples and baritone Christian Gerhaher
in front of the chamber orchestra for Britten’s brilliant inclusion of Wilfred
Owen poems to dovetail with the Latin Requiem Mass.
As the performance
began we were immediately cast into an otherworldly atmosphere, choral
mutterings over orchestral unwindings, Britten’s use of the “diabolus in musica”
conflicting tritone leading us towards the hope of its eventual resolution.
The two men
sang with both dignity and anger, Staples utilising some eloquent head notes,
while Peretyako encompassed her wide-ranging lines with imperious agility. Simon
Halsey’s CBSO Chorus sang with exemplary diction, now crisp, now consoling, with
tones ranging from warm sorrow to blazing acclamation. Nicholas Mulroy shaped
the CBSO Youth Chorus and the Trinity Boys Choir with freshness and innocent
brightness.
Every section
of the CBSO responded in character to this unique masterpiece, those in the
chamber orchestra taut and alert (for the premiere the metrocentric Britten
imported the Melos Ensemble “of London”, and conducted them himself, leaving
Meredith Davies to conduct all the rest).
Kazuki Yamada
paced everything with absorbing sensitivity, with huge rhythmic precision, and
a sure grasp of structural linking. As Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” (even
more affecting as the poet was killed a week before Armistice Day) drew to its
cumulative close we were all set for a long, reflective silence, the best
possible tribute to this transcendental event.
Christopher
Morley