Britten's War Requiem
8th November 2014, 7.30pm, in Kendal Parish Church
CCI Chorus and Orchestra
Photographs taken at the final rehearsal for the War Requiem.
The War Requiem is a profoundly moving and expressive statement about the futility of war. It interweaves the poems of Wilfred Owen – himself a serving officer but with strongly pacifist beliefs who was killed just one week before the Armistice (his parents received the telegram even as they heard the church bells ringing to signal the victorious end of the war) – with the Latin Requiem Mass for the Dead. Although not entirely unprecedented this juxtaposition created, and continues to create on each occasion, a deeply disturbing effect.
Britten uses huge vocal and instrumental forces in a way reminiscent of Verdi in his Requiem but which allows the full measure of Owen’s frequent use of irony to leave us far from calmly composed by the end. In addition the piece is hugely theatrical. The soprano soloist, chorus and full orchestra perform the Mass settings. When she sang for us in 2005 Elizabeth Traill was described by Hugh Davies in his Gazette report as ‘simply outstanding’ and ‘impeccably accurate’. In the foreground, accompanied by a chamber ensemble, the tenor and bass soloists sing the Owen settings. Nicholas Hurndall Smith and John Lofthouse, our soloists, are themselves exactly of an age when, in 1914, they would have been called to serve in France. In the distance, ethereally detached, the voices of the Amabile Girls’ Choir accompanied by chamber organ, intone with purity and innocence further words from the Latin text.
The piece was written for the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, the original medieval building having been destroyed in the terrifyingly destructive bombing raid in 1941. In that context the first performance, surrounded by all the symbols of reconciliation for which the new cathedral stands and only yards away from the preserved ruins of the old cathedral, was hugely emotional.
Our performance, along with many other projects taking place in 2014 and beyond to commemorate the centenary of ‘the war to end wars’, will, we hope, help to focus people’s minds in this region and beyond on how humanity in the last 100 years has reneged on so many promises and created so much suffering and, now that war is clearly an instrument of policy, intends to continue doing so. We will be joined in this commemorative project by pupils in Queen Katherine School staging their own devised piece of drama; by other local dramatic societies staging plays concerning the war; by the Kendal Midday Concert Club putting on a song recital including ‘A Shropshire Lad’, settings of poems by A.E.Housman by George Butterworth, another victim of the war; by the Brewery Poets presenting poems by several of the great war poets and by the WI staging an exhibition in the Parish Church on the night of our performance showing the role of women in WW1.
Britten uses huge vocal and instrumental forces in a way reminiscent of Verdi in his Requiem but which allows the full measure of Owen’s frequent use of irony to leave us far from calmly composed by the end. In addition the piece is hugely theatrical. The soprano soloist, chorus and full orchestra perform the Mass settings. When she sang for us in 2005 Elizabeth Traill was described by Hugh Davies in his Gazette report as ‘simply outstanding’ and ‘impeccably accurate’. In the foreground, accompanied by a chamber ensemble, the tenor and bass soloists sing the Owen settings. Nicholas Hurndall Smith and John Lofthouse, our soloists, are themselves exactly of an age when, in 1914, they would have been called to serve in France. In the distance, ethereally detached, the voices of the Amabile Girls’ Choir accompanied by chamber organ, intone with purity and innocence further words from the Latin text.
The piece was written for the consecration of the new cathedral in Coventry, the original medieval building having been destroyed in the terrifyingly destructive bombing raid in 1941. In that context the first performance, surrounded by all the symbols of reconciliation for which the new cathedral stands and only yards away from the preserved ruins of the old cathedral, was hugely emotional.
Our performance, along with many other projects taking place in 2014 and beyond to commemorate the centenary of ‘the war to end wars’, will, we hope, help to focus people’s minds in this region and beyond on how humanity in the last 100 years has reneged on so many promises and created so much suffering and, now that war is clearly an instrument of policy, intends to continue doing so. We will be joined in this commemorative project by pupils in Queen Katherine School staging their own devised piece of drama; by other local dramatic societies staging plays concerning the war; by the Kendal Midday Concert Club putting on a song recital including ‘A Shropshire Lad’, settings of poems by A.E.Housman by George Butterworth, another victim of the war; by the Brewery Poets presenting poems by several of the great war poets and by the WI staging an exhibition in the Parish Church on the night of our performance showing the role of women in WW1.