Britten ‘War Requiem’

23 October 2011
Avery Fisher Hall, New York

London Symphony Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda, conductor
Sabina Cvilak, soprano
Ian Bostridge, tenor
Simon Keenlyside, baritone
London Symphony Chorus

Some Rehearsal photos

What the critics say

Harry Rolnick,Concertonet.com,24.10.2011

The London Symphony Orchestra played two Requiem Masses last week. The first, with fervent straightforward adherence to the ritual of the Church, was written probably for a concert hall. The second, last night, was unorthodox, questioning, and composed for St.Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry Cathedral, itself–like the poet Wilfred Owen– the victim of war.

Yet Benjamin Britten’s ironically titled War Requiem, has, in its eclectic languages (Latin, Greek, Owen’s English poetry) and music (Plainchant, Bach trumpets, perhaps a quote from Verdi in the Lachrymosa) has, to these ears, more of an endearing and universal quality than Beethoven’s Solemn Mass with its calls for God’s blessings.

Admittedly, while the Beethoven sounded perfectly fine in Avery Fisher Hall, with its chorus, orchestra and soloists, the War Requiem was missing the spaces of a cathedral. The American Boychoir, with its lovely innocent voices, was sometimes unbalanced when with the full choir. The little chamber group with the male soloists was overcome by the voices. True, soprano soloist Sabina Cvilak, placed with the full choir in the background, did offer that spatial resonance with her solos. And true too, the entire ensemble was given a massive lift thanks to a conductor I had never heard before, Gianandrea Noseda.

Mr. Noseda did not conduct a cut-and-dried piece here. His involvement had a logic, an organic volition that kept the movements going, giving special emphasis to that which Britten did most carefully, the Owen poems. Keeping full control of his might forces crowed onto the stage is probably more difficult than when they are separated in a large cathedral. But he conducted with such power that the work had a hefty power throughout.

The London Symphony Orchestra was at its best, from the brass fanfare of the Dies Irae (shades of Verdi and Berlioz!) to the crystal-clear orchestral fugue of the Offerotrium. The London Symphony Chorus has probably sung this countless times, but singing the Recordare or the final Libera me was given special poignancy.

The Beethoven Missa Solemnis gave little chance for soloists to shine out, but Benjamin Britten had a special meaning in the original War Requiem to give personality to his singers. There, they were purposely chosen at one Englishman, one Russian and one German. Last night, we did not have that symbolism, but the intensity of the music spoke for itself.

Perhaps I enjoyed Ms. Cvilak above all for her soaring voice coming out of the choir rather than in front. But the two males had the more forceful English-language roles, with Messrs Bostridge and Keenlyside were moving.

Nowhere did they–or the composer–get better than the final poem of two warriors who have died and now recognize each other.

“Let us sleep now,” they sing, to the accompaniment of the same bells heard at the start.

“What passing bells for those who die as cattle?” asked Owen. “Only the monstrous anger of the guns.”

Owen wrote of the Great War, Britten set this 20 years after the Second World War when the embers of Vietnam were being already stirred. And we heard it while involved in two…or three…or perhaps more wars.

The words, the music can, as the poet says, “only warn.” At the end, the audience applauded as they would applaud an opera, quartet or symphony. Personally, I wanted not the eternal silence of the grave but silence sufficient to understand Britten’s mighty achievement.

Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times, 24.10.2011

Lincoln Center’s monthlong White Light Festival is back for its second year. As before, the focus of the event is a little blurry. In the words of Lincoln Center’s artistic director, Jane Moss, White Light is an exploration of music and art’s power to reveal “dimensions of our interior lives.” The programs offer “a spectrum of artistic expression that moves us inward and expands our spirit.”

Ms. Moss’s sincerity is affecting. Any project that results in the diversity of offerings of this year’s festival deserves respect and gratitude. On Friday night the great London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Colin Davis, performed Beethoven’s seldom heard “Missa Solemnis” at Avery Fisher Hall, with the London Symphony Chorus and a strong quartet of vocal soloists. The performance of this mystical, challenging and elusive score was sometimes inspired, sometimes shaky, but very moving.

And on Sunday afternoon the London Symphony and Chorus were back, this time with the conductor Gianandrea Noseda, the soprano Sabina Cvilak, the tenor Ian Bostridge and the baritone Simon Keenlyside, for an overwhelming performance of Britten’s “War Requiem,” another work that certainly fits the festival’s goal of exploring spiritual dimensions of our lives.

Yet doesn’t every musical work take listeners inward in some way? A joyous performance of a playful finale from a Haydn symphony can touch me as deeply as a sensitive performance of an affirming Bach cantata. And how do you define spiritual? What a festival can do is set works in a context that invites audiences to experience them in a certain way.

There were great expectations for “Missa Solemnis” with Mr. Davis. At 84, he has not been in the best of health, as he made clear in a recent interview with The New York Times. Last Wednesday Mr. Davis conducted an exhilarating Sibelius program with the London Symphony to open Lincoln Center’s Great Performers season. But conducting Beethoven’s 80-minute complex, sometimes baffling “Missa Solemnis” represents another kind of challenge.

Beethoven composed this monumental piece over four years, finishing it in 1823, a period that overlapped with his work on the Ninth Symphony. The Mass can be heard as an austere companion to the symphony. Whole stretches unfold in thick, sometimes cumbersome counterpoint. I have seldom heard a truly convincing performance, though in 2010 Alan Gilbert led the New York Philharmonic in an impressively cogent and clear-textured account.

Mr. Davis’s performance began splendidly with the Kyrie. The chorus (directed by Joseph Cullen) filled the resounding sustained harmonies with full-bodied but never forced sound. The music flowed in broad sweeps and spacious arcs.

There were similarly inspired passages, like the opening of the Gloria, which had the exuberance of the triumphant final choral scene in “Fidelio.” At these moments Mr. Davis, who mostly sat in a tall chair, rose to his feet and whipped up his forces. But during many stretches he held onto a post near the music stand to steady himself.

At times the ready choristers and top-notch orchestra players needed more direction, it seemed, and the performance became tentative. The fine soloists were Helena Juntunen, a gleaming soprano; the rich-voiced mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly; the tenor Paul Groves, sounding ardent and confident; and the stentorian bass Matthew Rose.

Britten’s 90-minute “War Requiem” is his most public piece. He wrote it for the 1962 rededication of the Coventry Cathedral, which had been destroyed by bombing in 1941. Much of the score involved settings of the Latin liturgy for full orchestra, chorus, a soprano and an offstage boys’ choir. A lifelong pacifist, Britten incorporated into the work some antiwar poems by Wilfred Owen, who died on the battlefield at 25, a week before the armistice in 1918. These sections are sung by tenor and baritone soloists, mostly accompanied by a chamber-size contingent of the orchestra.

Though overtly dramatic and mostly accessible, the music is so inventive and charged with ambiguities that talk of conservative versus experimental approaches to composition seems pointless. The “War Requiem” is a bold, personal and modern work.

It came through that way on Sunday in the gripping, nuanced performance that Mr. Noseda conducted, right from the start, when the hushed chorus sang, “Requiem aeternam,” asking the Lord to grant the deceased eternal rest, but in veiled, quietly intense music that suggests trepidation, as if the choristers were afraid to make this plea.

Ms. Cvilak brought a lustrous soprano voice and guileless sincerity to her singing. Mr. Bostridge sang with ethereal beauty and vivid feeling for Owen’s words. And Mr. Keenlyside brought a combination of muscular sound and poignancy to his impressive singing. The sweet voices of the American Boychoir (directed by Fernando Malvar-Ruiz) wafted into the hall from offstage.

This performance would have resonated without the framework of the festival. But hearing it in this context set a meaningful template for what is to come.

Sedgwick Clark, MusicalAmerica.com, 27.10.2011

If I never hear another concert I will die a contented music lover, having heard the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform Beethoven’s Missa solemnis under Colin Davis and Britten’s War Requiem under Gianandrea Noseda last weekend. To see Davis, now 84 and in declining health, haltingly ascend the podium to sit and conquer this craggy Mass was almost unbearable. But his musical powers were undiminished in a performance of logical and emotional power from first note to last. It was the slowest Missa I’ve ever heard—over an hour and a half, not counting time between movements—and I hung on every single note.

I was not alone. Lincoln Center’s usually noisy and inattentive audience was utterly rapt until some yahoo shouted bravo before the last note had a chance to settle. For nearly two centuries the Missa has defeated listeners far more comprehending and spiritually inclined than I. One has to work, unlike in the contemporaneous Ninth Symphony, which abounds in engaging melodies.

No praise could be high enough for the conviction and execution of the LSO forces. British reviews for their Proms concert this past summer with Davis were more respectful than laudatory; if accurate, all I can figure is that the performance was a warm-up for this American engagement. Mezzo Sarah Connolly stood out among the vocal soloists. Concertmaster Gordan Nikolitch played the extended “Benedictus” violin solo eloquently. The timpanist’s dynamic use of hard Beethovenian sticks provided ideal punctuation. And Davis? He has always been true to the composer, if at times too reverently. On this evening his leadership was positively humbling.

The LSO’s performance of Britten’s War Requiem on Sunday afternoon was no less affecting. The composer, a pacificist and apparent non-believer, combined the traditional Latin Requiem Mass and poems written by Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action seven days before the Armistice. Critics have split hairs since the premiere in May 1962, but Britten’s message has never escaped any audience I’ve been a part of.

The work is no stranger to New York. Kurt Masur led heartfelt performances of it twice and recorded it during his 13-year tenure with the Philharmonic; he once said he would program it every season if he could. Robert Shaw gave distinguished performances in Carnegie Hall. My own touchstone has been an emotionally devastating performance by the National Symphony Orchestra under Mstislav Rostropovich at Carnegie in early 1979, with Peter Pears, Galina Vishnevskaya, and John Shirley-Quirk as soloists. The LSO performance under Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda was in that league.

One knew that Noseda meant business when he stood on the podium for nearly a minute until all audience pre-performance rustling had ceased and then brought in the chorus’s “Requiem aeternam” at the threshold of audibility. There were a few more coughs throughout this performance than in the Beethoven, but not many, and at the very end Noseda drew out Britten’s pppp for all it was worth. The audience held its collective breath until he lowered his arms some 20 seconds later. In our day, when silence is intolerable, there is no higher compliment.

The success of the performance was also due, in no small measure, to the vocal forces: the LSO Chorus, again directed by Joseph Cullen; American Boychoir, directed by Fernando Malvar-Ruiz; soprano Sabina Cvilak, tenor Ian Bostridge, and baritone Simon Keenlyside.

Britten might have found it ironic that his War Requiem would be paired so rewardingly with Beethoven, a composer he disparaged. But his music, like Beethoven’s, has always spoken to distinctly human concerns, and the War Requiem may be his most enduring testimony.