Ashkenazy masters massed forces of SSO and Philharmonia Choirs in eloquent prayer for peace.

Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

November 9, 2013

Commissioned for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral (which had been bombed in the Second World War), Britten’s vast War Requiem was first performed there in 1962 and recorded shortly afterwards. It was a work the pacifist composer had been waiting all his life to write. The words of the Requiem Mass are set for a soprano, full choir and large orchestra (plus a children’s choir accompanied by organ). Interspersed throughout are settings of “war protest” poems by the WW1 poet Wilfred Owen, given to tenor and baritone soloists accompanied by a separate chamber ensemble. If Britten had wanted to, he could have created two works – a traditional requiem and a distinguished orchestral song cycle – but the whole point is their juxtaposition. Owen’s intimate and often angry poems deal with personal suffering and loss, while the Latin tropes of the mass represent the public reaction to war, in particular the pomp of official mourning. Gradually these two elements become irreconcilable. Only after Owen’s great poem of reconciliation Strange Meeting (“I am the enemy you killed,...