Great Requiems for November

Week Four: Benjamin Britten's War Requiem

In this centenary year of the 1918 Armistice, our Requiem for the last week in November is Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, a large-scale setting commissioned to mark the the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid (see image above). In it, the traditional Latin texts are interwoven with poems by Wilfred Owen, killed in action just days before the Armistice.

This version is performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (which performed at the world premiere in Coventry in 1962). It is  conducted by Andris Nelsons. A Telegraph review described this performance thus: "Mark Padmore’s tenor captured the consoling, empathetic element in the piece, while Hanno Müller-Brachmann’s grainy baritone caught its weight of fatalism and sadness. The combination in the setting of Wilfrid Owen’s poem "Let Us Sleep Now" was spellbinding."

You can follow the libretto here.