21 August 2014

It was inevitable that we would find Britten’s War Requiem at this year’s Proms and after the superb performance by BBCSO last autumn I had expected a repeat with those forces. However, last night we heard the CBSO with the BBC Proms Youth Choir under Andris Nelsons. The same conductor and orchestra recorded the work in Coventry Cathedral, with different soloists, for the fiftieth anniversary of the first performance in 1962. That last night did not come up to the levels of either of these was obvious but the reasons were not as easy to detect.

The opening sections seemed oppressive, almost melancholic and despairing, with the boys’ choir so far removed as to be unemotional. Only the first conclusion, with its finely resolved cadence brought any hint of peace. Both of the men, Toby Spence and Hanno Muller-Brachmann, have warm voices but neither had the cutting edge to chill us with the impact of Wilfred Owen’s verse. Recalling both Peter Pears and Philip Langridge one was aware of the sort of sound Britten expects here. One ever hangs and the conclusion of So Abram rose were effective but other moments went for less than anticipated. Susan Gritton has a soprano to carry over the large orchestral forces and the Lacrimosa and Libera me both made a fine impact.

The Choral forces had a brightness of tone which was pleasing but lacked the precision and cutting edge the work requires. There were also some strange tempi. The Dies Illa after Be slowly lifted up seemed unnecessarily slow and calculated, lacking the emotional impact the score seems to require.

The final passages of the Libera me brought back the melancholic despair of the opening which was not countered in the final pages. The most poignant moment came with the reference to better men and greater wars as if Owen could sense the on-going bleakness of human existence.

At the end, Andris Nelsons held an extended silence, almost uncomfortably long. There are times when performances naturally require a time to recover before we applaud but this seemed to be out of keeping with what we had actually heard. An uncomfortable evening then, but perhaps, this year of all years, a good thing.