Britten’s War Requiem with the LPO and Edward Gardner

Britten
War Requiem 

Natalya Romaniw (soprano)
Paul Appleby (tenor)
Benjamin Appl (baritone)

London Philharmonic Choir
London Symphony Chorus
Tiffin Boys’ Choir and Girls’ Choir

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner

A full house greeted this season-opening concert with palpable enthusiasm and, wonder of wonders, a decent hiatus of quiet contemplation before the closing applause. Never mind that Britten’s War Requiem continues to annoy critics of a modernist disposition, convinced that its derivative elements can only have been given a free pass on account of the subject matter. That said, the score certainly caught the zeitgeist in 1962, and sales of Decca’s studio recording—released in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the escalating conflict in Vietnam—cemented its place in the repertoire. There have been few comparable successes in recent years, save perhaps for Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, a work scored for much smaller forces. Unlike John Foulds’s A World Requiem, popular in the 1920s but a rarity today, Britten’s principled conflation has proved no mere pièce d’occasion.

Given this ‘external’ context, casting nevertheless remains key. When Decca recorded the piece, producer John Culshaw assembled the exact, iconic soloists Britten envisioned to represent the formerly warring nations of Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom: Galina Vishnevskaya, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Peter Pears. Tonight, following a late substitution, the American Mozart specialist Paul Appleby stood in (for Allan Clayton) alongside the intended baritone, dual German-British national Benjamin Appl. Natalya Romaniw represented Wales, the UK and—on topic via her grandfather—Ukraine as well.

In Edward Gardner’s 2013 London performance, his mostly Birmingham-based forces had to battle the resonant mush of St Paul’s Cathedral; the main challenge then was securing clarity. Tonight at the ‘drier’ Royal Festival Hall, that challenge was reversed, with performers positioned remotely in a bid to create the illusion of acoustic space. Of Britten’s disparate ensembles, the chamber group was placed hard right, with the children’s choirs and their mini-organ (more eager than beatific) somewhere up in the balcony tier. The presence of girls was of course ‘inauthentic’. The adult choirs, numbering more than 200 in total, were accommodated behind the stage without spilling over into the annexes. The soloists were bunched together on either side of the conductor. 

Romaniw, who for Sir Antonio Pappano’s 2024 performance at the BBC Proms had been placed behind the main orchestra directly below the organ console, was now up front, vocally and sartorially resplendent in a darkly shining gown. If Vishnevskaya was the template, the soprano from Swansea was less imperious, more human as she soared over chorus and orchestra. On Gardner’s right, Appl contributed film-star glamour and a lieder-singer’s sensitivity in lieu of rugged intensity. Replicating some of Fischer-Dieskau’s idiosyncratic vowels, he came into his own in moments of conversational intimacy. The ‘Strange Meeting’ section could scarcely have been more poignant. If this was Appleby’s first War Requiem it did not show; his gleaming lyrical lines seemed to proceed with phenomenal length of breath. 

Best of all were the adult choirs, not just drilled into unanimity but sensitive and wide-ranging in a rendition that will surely be immortalized commercially: the LPO already lists a less searing in-house release under Kurt Masur. Gardner’s approach seemed ideal, wonderfully taut and driven in the Verdian ensembles yet giving seemingly infinite space to Britten’s most intimate and personal expression. Quietly spectacular—and emotionally exhausting—were those crucial structural moments in which the chorus attempts to find harmonic rest. The closing bars were projected with the utmost subtlety, as if glimpsing a fast-vanishing dream of reconciliation and peace still, just about, within reach.