RSNO: Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’
Usher Hall - 11/11/22
It seemed utterly appropriate that the RSNO, conducted by Thomas Søndergård, should mark Remembrance Day by playing Britten’s ‘War Requiem’. In addition, by also making it a Memorial Concert for the late Sir Alexander and Lady Veronica Gibson, it added an extra layer of poignancy. Lady Vee died this year, 27 years after her illustrious husband, and this seemed a very nice way to remember a wonderful couple, both of whom I had the honour of knowing. Sir Alex was a towering figure in Scottish musical life in the second half of the 20th Century, turning the SNO into a major international orchestra and founding Scottish Opera in 1962. I sang many times with him at the beginning of my career, notably in ‘Manon Lescaut’, ‘Fidelio’, ‘The Magic Flute’ and ‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’ and learned a huge amount from this wonderful musician.
Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ was written to mark the re-opening, in 1962, of Coventry Cathedral after the destructive war damage during WWII, and is, in my opinion, one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. Britten’s pacifism was perhaps the most important single element in his life, and its contribution to his creative work quintessential. He was also racked with guilt that he and Peter Pears left the UK for the United States at the beginning of WWII, a journey which was much criticised at the time. When he was commissioned to write a piece for the consecration of Basil Spence’s new cathedral at Coventry, it is clear that he was determined to create a lasting memorial to all wars, and the needless destruction and waste that war brings in its wake. His utterly brilliant idea of combining the ancient Latin ‘Missa pro Defunctis’ (Mass for the Dead) with nine poems by the First World War poet, Wilfred Owen, the poems sung by tenor and baritone, accompanied by chamber orchestra, and the Mass sung by soprano solo, full chorus and full orchestra, with a children’s chorus and chamber organ commenting in the distance, was inspired, and makes the experience of listening to the War Requiem such a deeply moving one.
I have sung the baritone solo twice in my career, and each time discovered astonishing new facets of Britten’s creative genius in the score. It was written for specific singers, both in terms of their nationality and also their own interpretive mastery. Galina Vishnevskaya, the great Russian soprano, who had lived through the appalling siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany, and who then had been treated, originally as a plaything by Stalin and his henchmen, and then scorned and vilified as an enemy of Communism, was the embodiment of implacable fate in the Mass. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the finest singer I ever heard and the master of the German Lied, who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht, having seen his handicapped brother liquidated by the Nazis, and then was captured by the Allies, was the obvious choice for the baritone solos, and Britten’s partner and fellow pacifist, Peter Pears, was the only person to sing the tenor solos.
I was lucky enough to hear Fischer-Dieskau sing many times at the Edinburgh Festival, and had the immeasurable honour of studying with both Peter and Galina at Aldeburgh in the 1970s and 80s and could call them my friends.
Consequently, any performance of the War Requiem holds particular memories for me, and I love the piece dearly. Tonight’s concert was superbly organised by the RSNO, and was something of a triumph, with Søndergård the presiding genius at the work’s heart. A decent, if not full, audience turned up on this blustery evening - sadly, the name of Benjamin Britten still turns some spectators away, unable to come to terms with his wholly unique compositional style. Happily, there were quite a lot of younger audience members, an encouraging sign.
The small chamber orchestra, basically formed out of the RSNO’s principal players, were lined up in front and to the right of the conductor, with the tenor and baritone to right and left, while the full orchestra engulfed them from the left and back. The chorus and organ towered over the proceedings at the back, while the children’s choir was at the back of the Grand Circle. Whoever decided to put the soprano soloist in front of the percussion, on the same level as the orchestra, made a mistake, as she was invisible to many in the Stalls, and struggled to be heard at times. It would have been far better to have put her beside the lower level of chorus sopranos, in my opinion.
There was a frisson of dismay when it was announced that the tenor soloist, Stuart Jackson, was unwell and craved our indulgence, but it actually transpired that he was the most successful of the soloists. His beautiful high lying tenor voice proved perfect for Britten’s writing, and his wonderful interpretive skills came to the fore, especially as he had to marshal his forces carefully. The voice is very well placed, and so he had no need to over sing, a fine lesson for any younger singer with a cold. Less is often more, in my experience!
Sadly, the opposite applied to the baritone, Benjamin Appl, from whom I wanted a lot more. Essentially, his light pleasant baritone was not sufficient for this part, and we missed much of the drama of this difficult solo line. I feel he was basically miscast, rather than singing badly, and he came into his own in the final section, the utterly devastating ‘Strange Meeting’, where the shade of the baritone soldier meets the shade of his tenor killer the day before. Now both are dead. This is one of Owen’s most astonishing poems, sung largely unaccompanied, with subtle orchestral interventions, and here Mr Appl’s undoubted skill in Lieder singing was much more prominent.
Susanne Bernhard, as I said earlier, suffered from being badly positioned, but I also felt that she lacked the visceral brutality of the soprano part, something that was totally natural to Galina. It’s not fair to compare Ms Bernhard with one of the greatest singers of the 20th Century, but again I felt that she was somewhat miscast here, through no fault of her own. We don’t hear much from the human voice in the RSNO’s season, and it’s a shame if the casting is not spot on.
These minor caveats didn’t spoil the overall success of the concert, however, and the audience reaction at the end, after a long silence, superbly maintained by the conductor, was tumultuous. The transition from the Strange Meeting to the final section of the work is one of the miracles of Britten’s writing, as ‘Let us sleep now’ melts into ‘In Paradisum’, and all the forces join together in an unforgettable expression of tranquillity, leading to the blessed harmony of Amen.
