Composer: Benjamin Britten
Conductor: Edward Gardner
It’s a rare treat to hear Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, with its requirement for three separate choirs, two orchestras and three soloists. The work’s seriousness and intensity could present a challenge to an audience too, but this magnificent performance at the Royal Festival Hall by Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra holds everyone captive. The silence when the work finished is thrilling; the applause that follows thunderous.
The whole ensemble plays with passion and commitment. Gardner is deeply attentive to the tensions created by Britten’s juxtaposition of the Latin text of the Missa pro defunctis with poems by Wilfred Owen. Each of the three soloists, soprano Natalya Romaniw, tenor Paul Appleby and baritone Benjamin Appl, articulates Owen’s powerful lyrics with both feeling and controlled precision. They are supported by a huge mass of singers – the London Philharmonic Choir under their director Madeleine Venner, the London Symphony Chorus, directed by Mariana Rosas, and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Girls’ Choir directed by James Day.
Gardner brings out every nuance of the rich orchestral scoring, from the evocative bells to the wonderfully stirring trumpets, trombones and a tuba.
Further creative tension in the work comes from the echoes of other requiems, especially the dramatic Dies irae of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem. In Britten’s own Dies irae, the long second movement, his reprise of the opening chorus comes after poems which inflect with pathos the presentation of the terrifying Day of Judgment, in particular the baritone solos, ‘Bugles sang’ and ‘Sonnet on Seeing a Piece of our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action’ and the tenor solo ‘Move him, move him’ in the Lacrimosa.
Most heart-breaking of all is Owen’s ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ for tenor and baritone. It’s one of his most powerfully bitter poems and the musical world Britten creates for this is spacious and dramatic. In the middle section, where the Angel counsels Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, the harp and piccolo make for gentle, magical tones. We know how this story should end. But then comes Owen’s ferocious re-imagining in the devastating final couplet, where the Old Man ‘slew his son/And half the seed of Europe, one by one.’ We hear echoes of this image in the choral reprise of ‘Quam olim Abrahae’ with its repeated phrase ‘et semini eius’.
The Sanctus starts with a lower rumble of sound, growing to the tremendous blasts of the ‘Hostias’. Relief comes briefly with the Agnus Dei from the chorus and tenor.
The final Libera me is, in this performance, almost overwhelming. The London Philharmonic’s full orchestral powers, highlighted by clashing cymbals and thundering drums, bring out the horror of the Day of Judgment ‘when the heavens and the earth shall be moved’. But it is ultimately cathartic, with the peace that follows on in the In paradisum and the final poem, Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’, with its deep compassion expressed in the line ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’. Britten suggests the Meeting takes place in the afterlife, but has removed Owen’s bleak reference to its taking place in hell.
A memorably moving performance.
Reviewed on 26 September 2026
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
100%
Memorably moving performance