Ruins of Coventry Cathedral created by German bombing during WWII (photograph by Andrew Walker, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license)
Last night in Davies Symphony Hall I experienced my second encounter with a performance by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) of Benjamin Britten’s Opus 66 War Requiem. Composed in 1961, the music had been commissioned for the consecration of the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral, which had been destroyed by German bombing in 1940. That consecration took place in Coventry on May 30, 1962; and the “original cast” recorded the work in a Decca Records studio in January of 1963.
As was the case for most of his other recordings, Britten conducted the recording sessions. The soloists were (as they had been at Coventry) soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, tenor Peter Pears, and baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. The choral resources combined the Bach Choir with the London Symphony Chorus. David Willcocks serves as chorus master. The passages for boy choir were sung by the Highgate School Choir under the direction of Edward Chapman. They were accompanied by organist Simon Preston. The instrumental resources combined a one-to-a-part chamber orchestra, performed by the Melos Ensemble, with the London Symphony Orchestra.
The libretto combined the Latin text for the Requiem with selected poems by Wilfred Owen. Owen was a poet that fought in the First World War. The cover page of Britten’s score included the following passage by Owen:
My subject is War, and the pity of War.The Poetry is in the Pity…All a poet can do today is warn.
He was killed in action at the age of 25 on November 4, 1918, a week before the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
The Requiem text served as the “spinal cord” of Britten’s composition. The settings of the Latin text were for performance by the full orchestra, soprano soloist, and boy choir. Interleaved among the movements were settings of Owen’s poems performed by the two male soloists along with the chamber orchestra. I suspect that it was not coincidence that one of those soloists was British and the other was German.
For quite some time, the original recording was the only available account of a performance of Britten’s Opus 66. While it had the virtue of being a premiere, there were noticeable flaws in the “casting.” Fischer-Dieskau was not always comfortable with the English language; and some of his deliveries are peculiar (to say the least). Even more problematic, however, was that Vishnevskaya had absolutely no command of Latin; and her mispronunciations became a joke among those familiar with the recording.
Fortunately, there have been several “post-Britten” recordings on which the vocal work is more faithful to the delivery of the text. Furthermore, Opus 66 was added to the SFS repertoire in April of 1969. Prior to this week’s performances, the work was last presented in November 2013 with visiting conductor Semyon Bychkov. The conductor for this week’s performances is Philippe Jordan; and the vocal soloists are soprano Jennifer Holloway, tenor Ian Bostridge, and baritone Brian Mulligan. Joshua Habermann served as guest director of the SFS Chorus, and the Ragazzi Boys Chorus was led by Artistic and Executive Director Kent Jue.
To the extent that the entire score has been etched into my memory ever since I played the original vinyl release to death, I have to say that Jordan’s leadership provided the most satisfying account of Britten’s score that I have ever encountered. The chamber orchestra was situated where the cellos were usually located, giving just about everyone in the audience an excellent view of their performance. The Chorus was up in the Terrace with Holloway sitting front-and-center. The Boys Chorus sounded as if it was coming from the 2nd Tier, remote but consistently clear. The interplay between the male vocalists and the chamber musicians was consistently razor-sharp; and the limited resources underscored the poignancy of Owen’s texts (which seldom required viewing of the projected titles).
Only two performances remain, both at 7:30 p.m. tonight and tomorrow; and this is a performance that definitely should not be missed.
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