Zum Konzert am 30. Mai 1962 in Coventry
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7. Juni 1962
Uraufführung des Kriegs-Requiems von Benjamin Britten
Ein unzweifelhaftes Meisterwerk hat die Auferstehung Coventrys geboren! Benjamin Brittens großes "Kriegsrequiem", als Totenklage und Anklage der beiden letzten Kriege gedacht, ist von der Presse und dem Publikum einhellig als solches aufgenommen worden. Viele Kräfte werden eingesetzt, um die Wucht, Inbrunst, Trauer und Friedenshoffnung der Partitur zu vermitteln. Ein großes Orchester, ein gemischter .... der in der Woche vor dem Waffenstillstand von 1918 fiel.
"Mein Thema ist der Krieg und das Leid des Krieges. Die Dichtung ist im Leid. Der Dichter kann heute nur noch warnen". Dieses Motto Owens stellt der Komponist seiner eigenen Schöpfung voran. Und er läßt die schmerzzerrissenen Verse von zwei Männerstimmen singen, einem Tenor und einem Bariton, die er dem Engländer Peter Pears und dem Deutschen Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau übertragen hat.
Läßt die Kathedrale die Frage offen, ob in einem Zeitalter schwindender Religiosotät die bildende Kunst noch hinreichend Inspiration aus dem Glauben empfangen könne, so beseitigt dieses Requiem jeden Zweifel daran, daß die moderne Musik der Erschütterung noch fähig sei. Ohne epigonenhaft zu wirken, knüpft Britten an Verdi und im weiteren Sinn an Gustav Mahler an - den verzweifeltsten Ewigkeitssucher unter den Komponisten dieses Jahrhunderts. Während das Dies irae in seiner Lautmalerei die Schrecken der Bombennacht von Coventry zurückruft, während das Hosianna des Sanctus zum flammenden Loblied Gottes wird, liegen die wahren Höhepunkte in den Augenblicken stillen, aber herzergreifenden Schmerzes.
Auf den Text der Totenmesse Quam olim Abrahae promisisti, et semini ejus folgt die ..... vereinigen sich im Libera me Tenor und Bariton zu Owens Kriegsvision "Seltsame Begegnung", da zwei Soldaten einander in einem dunklen Gang gegenüberstehen. "Ich bin der Feind, den du getötet hast, mein Freund!" Die beiden Stimmen klingen aus in ein geisterhaftes "Nun laß uns schlafen", indes der Knabenchor den paradiesischen Schlußgesang anhebt. das musikalisch wie moralisch gleich aufwühlende Werk in der Kathedrale von Coventry zum erstenmal zu hören, war ein unvergeßliches Erlebnis.
Hilde Spiel
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The Times, London, 1. Juni 1962
Unforgettable War Requiem
Benjamin Britten’s new War Requiem, a grand and solemn act of prayer and repentance, was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the new Coventry Cathedral, and here tonight it had its first performance. Large forces are employed and these will ensure that performances are rare. One could wish that everyone in the world might hear, inwardly digest, and outwardly acknowledge the great and cogent call to a sane, Christian life proclaimed in this Requiem; yet the work is so superbly proportioned and calculated, so humiliating and disturbing in effect, in fact so tremendous, that every performance it is given ought to be a momentous occasion.
The performance, which will bei repeated on Friday, was certainly that. It had certain special distinctions: first, that of its setting, then of Mr. Peter Pears and Mr. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as male-voice soloists (a collaboration musically, as well as symbolically, of profound impressiveness), of scrupulously prepared choral and orchestral forces (the Melos ensemble as well as the City of Birmingham Orchestra) under two conductors, the composer for the smaller group, Mr. Meredith Davies, surely and authoritatively directing the full strength, and chiefly the distinction of the work’s novelty.
[…]
But tonight’s performance was one which will never be forgotten.
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Benjamin Brittens Kriegsrequiem
Uraufführung beim Festival zur Einweihung der Kathedrale von Coventry
Über die neue Kathedrale in Coventry, die in Anwesenheit der Königin Elizabeth II. feierlich eingeweiht wurde, ist inzwischen vom architektonischen Standpunkt aus alles mögliche – sehr viel Kritisches, aber auch viel Lobendes – gesagt und geschrieben worden. [...]
Wichtiger und bedeutsamer aber als dieser "King Priam" von Michael Tippett dürfte das Auftragswerk Benjamin Brittens werden, das in der neuen Kathedrale selber uraufgeführt wurde und den Riesenraum des Hauses füllte und durch die Macht und Größe der eingesetzten Mittel fast zu sprengen drohte. Mehr als zwei Stunden dauerte dieses "War Requiem", das den üblichen Text des liturgischen Requiems dadurch erweitert und im Ganzen gesehen auch glücklich vertieft und aktualisiert, daß zwischen den einzelnen Teilen Gedichte von Wilfried Owen eingefügt sind. Diese sind fast durchweg solistischem Vortrag vorbehalten, begleitet von einem kleinen Instrumentenensemble, während Riesenorchester und Riesenchor, dazu ein Knabenchor und Orgel, die "Requiem"-Texte interpretieren. Drei Dirigenten sind notwendig; die Bändigung der entfesselten Klangmassen setzt das zusammengefaßte Teamwork von fast 500 Mitwirkenden voraus. Der erste Eindruck ist überwältigend, künstlerische Bedenken melden sich wohl beim Nachdenken, doch ist die geschlossene Einheit, die das Werk suggeriert, nachher kaum wegzudiskutieren. Unter den Solisten der Uraufführung fand sich auch Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, der mit Peter Pears zusammen die lyrischen Höhepunkte des Werks setzte. Meredith Davies dirigierte zusammen mit dem Komponisten das Riesenensemble, den Festival-Chor und das Sinfonieorchester aus Birmingham. Schon aus Raumgründen dürfte es fraglich sein, ob Brittens Beitrag für die Kathedral-Einweihung jemals anders als an diesem Ort in Coventry in solcher Vollendung wird aufgeführt werden können.
Hans G. Schürmann
The Sunday Telegraph, London, 3. Juni 1962
Of Our Time – and Eternal
Britten’s War Requiem joins passion with certainty of form
Although it has been Britten’s intention to write a large-scale non-liturgical Requiem for some eight years, the Coventry Festival has provided the ideal occasion. In turn, the War Requiem has expressed perfectly the festival’s mood of re-dedication, for reconciliation and refusal of bitterness are its themes, and "the pity of war" – so Wilfred Owen declared the subject of his poems. The solo roles were sung, wonderfully, by Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, with Heather Harper as a very gifted replacement in the absence of the Russian, Vishnevskaya.
[…]
It is never more moving than at the end, when the German baritone and the English tenor converse, in "Strange Meeting," with another long recitative of great compassion; and over their joined voices, "Let us sleep now," comes the distant sound of boys’ chorus singing the "In Paradisum."
[…]
But the music’s sublime clarity and force penetrate everything, surely into the least receptive mind. Art which joins such passion of feeling on the greates issues to such certainty of form and range of expression is rare in any age, and especially needed today.
John Warrack
The Observer Weekend Review, London, 3. Juni 1962
THE TWO WORLDS OF MODERNISM
[…]
The work is at once an act of mourning and a cry of protest, for into the liturgical framework of the Requiem Mass Britten has inserted settings of poems by Wilfred Owen. Their bitter denunciations of the moral squalor of war serve as parables which give a personal meaning to the liturgy, just as its ritual raises their angry grief to a universal dimension.
These two contrasting levels are underlined by the device of accompanying the Owen songs with a small chamber group, while choir and full orchestra are reserved for the liturgical passages. The general effect is rather as though sections of "Das Lied von der Erde" had been interpolated into the Verdi Requiem, and the fact that Britten’s score bears mention in the same breath as these masterpieces is evidence of its stature.
Debt to Verdi
None the less it seems to me a more uneven work than has been generally suggested. There are sections in which the debt to Verdi is less than completely digested. Some of the songs are not very convincingly integrated into the structure of the Requiem as a whole; and though the melancholy air of "Bugles Blowing" is evocative this is one of two or three songs that do not seem to rise much above a level of exceptional skill.
In particular the Dies Irae suffers from these deficiencies. It is by far the most extended and varied movement and it contains some memorable sections (the beautifully shaped and very Verdian lament of the Lacrimosa is one of those ideas, so characteristic of Britten, that one is at first tempted to dismiss as déjà entendu, only to discover on closer acquaintance what a weight of personal emotion it carries). But at Coventry there seemed an insuffficient overall impetus to galvanise its huge limbs so that they could be perceived as part of a single body.
To what extent that was due to the distinctly disobliging acoustics of the new cathedral, which masked an abundance of detail as well as some pretty mediocre choral singing, time will show. But on Wednesday the work only began to reveal its full power in the Offertorium, into which Britten has inserted a setting of "So Abram arose," whose theme of the eternal readiness of the old to sacrifice the young is strikingly relevant to his interpretation of the liturgy. And just because he has here found a dramatic unity that eluded him in the Dies Irae he has been able to weave poem and liturgy into a compelling musical unity with a curiously scherzo-like quality.
In the Sanctus a rising tide of voices freely chanting "Pleni sunt coeli" is an impressionistic masterstroke, and the great hosannas that follow it have an immense jubilance, at once fervent and triumphant. By contrast, the bleakness of "After the blast of lightning" seems to banish this vision of glory as a vain illusion and to leave death and sorrow as the only final certainty. Here Britten’s own conviction seems to stand against the liturgical sense.
From this point it is only a step to the blackest moment of the whole work, a miraculous setting of "One ever hangs where shelled roads part" that is woven into the Agnus Dei. This is the shortest movement of the work, but the grief-laden intensity, unencumbered simplicity and musical concentration of these few pages put them among the finest things that Britten has done.
Yet in some ways the Libera me is even more remarkable, for Britten here attains a comparable intensity on a far larger and more varied canvas. The opering chorus has a desperate anguish as it mounts with unrelenting tread to a terrible climax. "Free me, free me," the voices cry, as though oppressed by all the suffering and torment of countless generationsl.
At this moment there comes a setting of "It seemed that out of battle I escaped," that is the culmination of the whole work. By means of the simplest narrative line, from which all gesture has been pared away, as though it were preordained to carry these words, he relates the meeting beyond the grave of a soldier with the enemy who has killed him. Sung by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Pears with a quality of emotion that went beyond mere artistry, it emerged as one of the most poignant memorials that man has raised to his own savagery and folly.
And then, as the baritone’s gentle lullaby, "Let us sleep now," is taken up by the tenor, the chorus and soprano soloist enter with In Paradisum moving slowly upward, and the boys’ voices can be heard chanting "Requiem aeternam" as the work moves to its end and Britten draws a great veil of consolation over so much suffering and sacrifice.
Heather Harper revealed herself as a soprano of outstanding calibre, Meredith Davies conducted, and the composer himself directed the chamber orchestra.
Peter Heyworth
The Sunday Times, London, 3. Juni 1962
From the Heart to the Heart
Nothing about Benjamin Britten is more striking than his freedom from inhibition. Outwardly reserved, he has preserved intact an inner creative world in which he has the sure habit of heartfelt spontaneity and simplicity. Though twice as clever as the most advanced of his contemporaries or juniors – perhaps just because he is twice as clever – he has remained untempted by paper complexities and imperceptible schematic jigsaws. The highly personal and recognisable language he has forged for himself over the years is made up, for all its subtlety, of traditional procedures and devices: of instantly communicative melody, harmonies whose point and pull can be felt at once notwithstanding their strangeness, and an emotional commitment that is rare and unmistakable – going from the heart to the heart, in Beethoven’s words.
All these qualities at their highest point, deployed on a scale far larger than is usual for him outside opera, are to be found in the War Requiem which was first performed in Coventry Cathedral on Wednesday. It does not break new ground, but it sums up and crowns the many achievements of the past ten years. It is surely a masterpiece of our time.
***
A characteristic audacity relates the grand and timeless spiritual theme to the dull, brutal horrors that stare us daily in the face. Britten has interspersed the Latin text of the Mass for the Dead, set for soprano soloist, boys’ and mixed choirs and very large orchestra, with nine of Wilfred Owen’s harsh and truthful anti-war poems, set for solo tenor and baritone with a small instrumental chamber group.
It was audacious to do this because the tone of the poems, which is at some points anti-religious and anti-clerical, might easily have been felt to jar with the ritual element, and because of the many acute problems of transition that arise between the two lavels of language and feeling. That there should be no jar except the one profound intended shock inherent in the conception is a measure of Britten’s taste and skill and of the strength of his inspiration. The work is, beyond all question, an artistic unity.
The means by which this unity is achieved will repay close attention because of the extreme ingenuity and beauty of the points of reference and transition; but the great outlines are wonderfully clear even at a first hearing. Throughout the work, the tritone or augmented fourth (in this case, C to F sharp) constantly recurs, sometimes as a symbol of sorrow, and sometimes seeming to suggest the blind forces of hostility against which the Requiem enters so passionate and moving a plea. At first the bells clash out the warring interval, and their jangle is not silenced until the last page. By then we have heard on three separate occasions an unaccompanied choral cadence resolve the hurtful discord into the deep peace of F major.
***
Within this general scheme, musical ideas of the greatest abundance bring to startling life the juxtaposed poems and sections of the Mass. The bells of the opening lead into the tenor’s angry question, "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?"; the fanfares of the Dies irae (the more terrible because scattered and punctuated with sudden silences) soften towards the baritone’s "Bugles sang, saddening the evening air"; the stuttering male-voice Confutatis maledictis is silenced by the baritone’s tremendous curse "on seeing a piece of our artillery brought into action"; the traditionally shaped but new-minted Lacrimosa, with the solo soprano soaring above detached chords for the choir, is mingled with the tenor’s barely whispered "Move him into the sun" – tears made manifest here and now, on earth.
Still stranger and more moving confrontations are to come. In the traditionally fugal Quam olim Abrahae the buoyant 6/8 theme is vaguely familiar; and the familiarity is explained when the two male soloists, quoting almost exactly from Britten’s Canticle on the same subject, adapt theme and treatment to suit Owen’s bitter perversion of the story, in which the old man will not listen to God’s command – "but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one."
After a concise and masterly blend of the Agnus Dei with Owen’s At a Calvary, and a shattering choral and orchestral climax in the Libera me, we reach the emotional resolution of the work as the huge chord of G minor fades into the ghostly dream of Owen’s "profound dull tunnel," wherein a soldier meets the enemy he had killed yesterday, and the two, with no bitterness left, but only faint thoughts of "wells sunk too deep for war, even the sweetest wells that ever were," murmur perpetually to each other "Let us sleep now," while, far above, the boys begin their consoling In paradisum.
The beauty and humanity of the singing of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Peter Pears in this episode and throughout the work were above praise, and I have never heard Heather Harper’s soprano sound so pure and so radiant. The whole performance, with Meredith Davies conducting the Festival Choir and City of Birmingham Orchestra, and with the composer in charge of the Melos Ensemble during the chamber sections, was worthy of the music, even though much fine detail was inevitably blurred by the cathedral’s acoustics; and the music itself was gloriously worthy of the occasion that had called it into being.
Desmond Shawe-Taylor
The Daily Telegraph, London, 1. Juni 1962
BRITTEN’S FINEST HOUR
Large forces in "War Requiem"
The new work which is perhaps most intimately associated with the peace-making spirit of the Coventry Festival, Britten’s "War Requiem," was given its world première in the Cathedral by the Festival Choir, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Melos Ensemble conducted by Meredith Davies.
Two conductors were in fact involved in the performance of a major work which demands very large forces. Mr. Davies was in charge of the chorus and full orchestra and the composer directed the chamber group.
This novel disposition reflects the brilliantly original plan of the Requiem, which combines the Latin text of the Mass for the dead with nine war poems by Wilfried Owen.
Thus the work reveals a most subtle interplay between a timeless ritual on the one hand and, on the other, living enactments of the condition of war which have all the poignancy, force and terror of immediate experience.
A Masterpiece
I must say at once and without reservation that I believe this work to be a masterpiece of the first order. It is certainly one of the finest things that Mr. Britten has yet written and should do much to silence the doubts of those who have thought that his present style of composition concentrates too exclusively on slender sonorities and small, if cumulative, forms.
This astounding Requiem, on the contrary, is built on a very large scale and is unusually rich in elaborate, though always very clear, choral and orchestral textures of a thrilling weight and density.
To match the division of his vocal and orchestral forces and the disposition of his texts, Mr. Britten offers two musical "styles," as it were the public and the private, which he manipulates, and integrates, with all the mastery of genius.
The settings of the Mass are largely ceremonial, even, in a sense, traditional, despite their patent originality. One often finds a use of musical imagery, in the wonderful "Lacrimosa," for example, which is wholly familiar, however fresh in effect.
Chamber-musical settings
The chamber-musical settings of Owen’s poetry are quite another matter. These inhabit a world of sound which Britten has made peculiarly his own and which serves to perfection the well-high unbearable intensity of expressiveness that he wishes to achieve in these unforgettable interpolations.
The dubious acoustics of the Cathedral somewhat clouded what one assumed to be a faithful performance by the chorus and orchestra. What shone through unimpeded was the radiant singing of Heather Harper, the soprano, and the magnificent art of Peter Pears, the tenor, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the baritone, which made "Strange Meeting," the last of the Owen settings, the point of climax of the whole work, and rightly so.
It is here that two "enemies" meet in final reconciliation.
Donald Mitchell