War Requiem

by Benjamin Britten; poems by Wilfred Owen

seen at the Coliseum on 22 November 2018

Martyn Brabbins conducts Emma Bell (soprano), David Butt Philip (tenor) and Roderick Williams (bass) with the ENO chorus (supplemented by the Finchley Children's Music Group and the international ensemble featuring in ENO's concurrent production of Porgy and Bess) and the ENO orchestra in a staged performance of Britten's War Requiem directed by Daniel Kramer and designed by Wolfgang Tillmans, as a contribution to the centenary commemoration of the Armistice which concluded the First World War.

Musically this was a fine performance, with clear singing from soloists and choruses, and strong orchestral playing. However, it rode roughshod over Britten's careful deployment of the vocal forces, since the children's chorus was not always separated from the rest, and the soloists were often moving around. Of course the physical space - an opera stage and orchestra pit - was entirely different from the cathedral setting for which the piece was commissioned (the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral in 1962), so it is hardly surprising that the aural dynamics had to be adjusted.

The question remains, should the War Requiem be staged at all? The text of the Latin requiem mass, interrupted by and contrasted with the often angry and bitter poetry of Wilfred Owen, provided a rich source of inspiration for Britten, and his musical response covers a huge emotional range. It is perhaps better heard as a concert performance, in either hall or cathedral, than on a stage where things have to happen. There is, after all, no story, and so the visual representation can only be a series of tableaux, more or less 'inspired' by the musical moment. Here, Tillmans uses three large screens for various projections, from disturbing photographs from a German anti-war book to scenes of street violence, to an idyllic view of trees through a window, some of which seemed to me to be totally misjudged (especially the reference to Srebrenica, which is far more apposite in the programme notes). In front of these, the chorus, dressed in muted colours, moved around being an anonymous mass of people - rarely of course soldiers, since both men and women were on stage. The movement (choreography Ann Yee) was usually slow, as if ritualised, perhaps not to tax singers with too much difficulty or distraction. 

Unfortunately at times it worked against the pain and irony of the music. For example, in the shocking reversal of the Abraham and Isaac story, where 'the old man ... slew his son, - / And half the seed of Europe, one by one', the two male soloists moved amongst the children gently touching one after the other on the head, upon which each child slowly sank down. One would not, of course, have wanted any graphic images or re-enactments of child massacres; but on the other hand this genteel slaying really worked against the viciousness Owen was holding up to scrutiny. Then, during the Agnus Dei, a military funeral was staged - distracting again because the commands to the pallbearers, though not especially loud, still interrupted the quiet but intense pathos of this culminating clash between the old Latin text and the poem Britten chose to set.

In staging anything, decisions have to be made which preclude other ways of responding. Here the soprano soloist often walked amongst the chorus, shielding some children, mourning some deaths, responding to the agony. I think at times this worked against the sense that the Latin texts are detached while the English poems are involved. But then, the tenor and bass devised an almost Music Hall routine for their first duet: the music at one level encourages this (it is very jaunty), but to see it visualised this way is to shut off the edge of desperation under the presumed lightheartedness.

A few days earlier I attended a performance of the War Requiem in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral, an acoustic space at the furthest remove from concert hall or theatre. The resonance was astounding; the words of the Latin text were perhaps not as clear amidst the echoes, but the power of the music was overwhelming. Here, Andrew Manze conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir, joined by members of the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover, with choristers from the Knabenchor Hannover and from Liverpool Cathedral - this was a joint venture by Liverpool and Hanover, where there had been a performance the week before. The soprano (Susan Bernhard) sang from the pulpit, properly 'above' the gritty world of the trenches; the boys sang from the Dulverton Bridge, an even higher remove which rendered them all but invisible so that their voices seemed to float out of nowhere; the tenor (Ed Lyon) and baritone (Benjamin Appl) were placed in front of the orchestra, who were in turn in front of the choir, giving them the best position to be heard over the washes of sound created by the larger forces behind them. Everything depended on the singers, with no visual stimuli except for the soaring architecture of the cathedral itself, and the soloists responded accordingly; in particular the rendition of the Owen poems by both Ed Lyon and Benjamin Appl was extremely clear and imbued with all sorts of passion, anger and tenderness, concluding with the deceptively beautiful duet 'Let us sleep now' undercut by the cool questioning unresolved final chords sung by the chorus. It was, for me, a far more satisfactory performance of the piece, which has long been one of my favourites.