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Britten,  War Requiem:  Christine Brewer (soprano)  Ian Bostridge (tenor) Thomas Hampson (baritone)  The Royal Opera Chorus, Tiffin Boys’ Choir, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House cond. Antonio Pappano.  Royal Albert Hall, London, 9. 11.2008. (ME)


‘I am playing it and I am thrilled with the greatness of this work, which I place on a level with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde…Hearing the War Requiem somehow cheers me up, makes me even more full of the joys of life.’ Thus Shostakovich in a letter written in 1963, and after a performance such as this one, finely timed to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of Armistice Day, you can hear what he meant. Wilfred Owen’s dictum that ‘All a poet can do today is warn’ still holds good for the most powerful sense of what this work is about, but on this occasion it was the life-affirming qualities which shone.

Of course the Royal Albert Hall has its disadvantages when staging any vocal work, no matter how large in scale – any sense of intimacy is bound to be dissipated by the vast space, yet the quality of Antonio Pappano’s command of the orchestra, Renato Balsadonna’s management of the chorus and Simon Toyne’s direction of the boys’ choir, was such that one felt involved in the work from the opening bars. That opening sequence can hardly ever have been so finely done, with the mutterings of the first choral line seeming to rise from the depths, the solemn tritone of the mourning bells, and the ethereal but not wraith-line ‘Te decet hymnus’ of the boys’ choir, brilliantly placed in the Gods.

Ian Bostridge was singing his fiftieth English Soldier, and if a little youthful swagger and wistfulness have been lost along the way, they have been compensated for by a mature sense of the shaping of the poems, lines such as ‘What passing bells for these who die as cattle?’ less bitter than before, and ‘The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall’ more melancholy. ‘Futility’ was a high point, as usual, the longing of ‘whispering of fields unsown’ starkly contrasted with the anguish of ‘Was it for this the clay grew tall?’ Bostridge and Thomas Hampson’s German Soldier make for an intriguingly complementary pair, given the latter’s habitual patrician air and his richly burnished tone, shown at its finest in ‘After the blast of lightning from the East.’

The ‘Offertorium’ is both the structural and emotional centre of the work, ‘The Parable of the Old Man and the Young’ here given an exceptionally dramatic reading, with the two voices blending mesmerizingly at the angel’s call. Both tenor and baritone fulfilled Britten’s instruction in his invitation to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to represent the German Soldier, that the poems ‘need singing with the utmost beauty, intensity and serenity,’ nowhere more so than in the sixth section, where ‘Strange Meeting,’ so often regarded as a ‘great’ poem but in reality full of weaknesses and only lifted into true greatness by Britten’s setting, was deeply moving.

Christine Brewer was the ideal soprano soloist – Britten’s original wish was for an English, German and Russian trio, but perhaps in this momentous week for America and for Europe, it was nicely appropriate to have two Americans and a Brit. Brewer’s artistry is such that the huge voice, easily riding over any orchestral surge, never becomes shrill or hectoring, and she manages to scale it down to a caressing, silken arc for music such as the ‘Benedictus.’ The evening’s most exhilarating singing came in the ‘Dies Irae’ and especially her ‘Lacrimosa’ where the clarity of the words and security of the line could hardly be bettered – it’s one thing to pitch A and B flats accurately, quite another to make them sound so effortless and yet so urgent.

All the choral and orchestral work was stunning, especially the ‘Dies Irae,’ and it’s not hard to imagine that a performance of this work might well become a yearly feature of the Royal Opera’s repertoire, in much the same way as the ‘Weinachtsoratorium’ of the Academy of Ancient Music or ‘Messiah’ of Polyphony are at Christmas.

Melanie Eskenazi


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