Benjamin Britten Conductor Meredith Davies Conductor Heather Harper soprano Thomas Hemsley baritone Peter Pears tenor Melos Ensemble BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra August 4, 1964
I have two 15 year old children. How would I not be moved by this tribute to our 18 year olds who died because we sent them to war? Life deserves to be lived.
In the chorus, I have sung both. There is no comparison, literally no comparison. Like comparing filet mignon to ribeye. Both, in their own ways, are magnificently beautiful.
@@marieconstantia4441 In my opinion they are not comparable. The Dufrufle is within a classical tradition. The Britten is unique. In terms of preference I go Dvorak, Faure, Britten.
When I was 19, 20, having had to leave college, come home 3000 miles to a mundane world, grateful for any income as a cashier at an upscale women's clothing store, going to art fine art lessons at night, I would listen to this very recording before work, and listen to it in my head all day, all those around me unaware. I wrote new programs for our rudimentary "cash register", NCR sought to hire me as a programmer, I refused, I greeted guests, became the fashion illustrator there...this music kept me sane enough to peform my job. A visual artist, I made a living, but for circumstance migh have been an IT person, rich as creasus, or gone into music. Playing Chopin on my old Chickering piano at home kept me sane.
Anna thank you for such a moving story. Please never give up playing on an old Chickering creating from your own voice and soul. Riches makes no sound nor remains in your heart.Britton's musical miracle is tattooed on ours. On winter nights far behind the silent trees the bell haunts the bone littered ground. Oh lord save us,oh lord save us, let us sleep now.
What a wonderful musician is Heather Harper - she learned her part in two weeks and sounded simply divine. And Britten really understood what sounds he was after.
I want to listen to it again and again. It’s hard to think of another 20th century work that succeeds so completely on so many levels. As a composer, I’d love to see Britten’s rough manuscripts to see perhaps how he came to include this or that idea. The piece is a master class in every aspect of setting words to music: the overall shape, the drama of the text, tension-relaxation, bitterness-sweetness, etc. I’m so grateful for the existence of this piece.
3 years later but Im sure your mind on the work hasn't changed: if you ever find yourself in Suffolk, UK make sure you visit Britten's house and ask to see the MSS for War Req
Oh my God I think this is the same recording I own of it! oh my! to SEE it!. oh my!Given the tech of the day, a miracle, they were able to record all these choruses! So faithfully! breaks my heart , gives me joy.
I didn't know that this prom performance was available on disc. I know two Britten-Pears recordings: the first is the 1962 performance at Coventry Cathedral (with a wondrous Heather Harper), the other is the 1963 Kingsway Hall recording (with Vishnevshkaya for whom it was written) (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rsSMCq7pl_k.html).
A youth who loved me while we were in college, he learned of my love of Britten and at great pains arranged for us an evening at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion to hear this live in 1975. One of the finest gifts, if not the finest, ever given me with such open heart. He didn't know Britten. How tenuous was my connection to knowing him from a high school companion...too complicated to remark here.But this, for me ranks as alway the most moving experience of my life, almost too painful in its beauty and horror, that I can only on occasion revisit it. glad to find it here. Greatful for the internet and RU-vid. No "Networks" and corporations putting profit first, ruining art, butrying it, or relegating to the graveyard of no memory.
I sang with the LA Master Chorale for 27 years, and had the privilege of performing this with the LA Phil at least 3 times at the Pavillion and once at Disney Hall. I joined in 1983 or 84 so I wasn't in the performance you heard. It was always a special piece to perform.
I performed this piece only a few months ago as a tenor (in the chorus, of course). It is as beautiful as ever. It was surreal performing it then… it’s still surreal listening to it now. This is truly one of, if not, my favorite, choral work of all time.
Sometimes there is the one time, the perfection, the artist/composer, with the vision, the artists, the the very jewel a perfect gem, given in a moment in time. This is one such.
The BBC ought to perform the WAR REQUIEM in memory of Maestra Patricia Burda Janeckova, the great Slovak soprano who passed away last year after a brave and heroic battle with cancer.
I remember performing this with The Cleveland Orchestra when I was in the Children's Chorus. God bless all of them who protect us from the evil of War. The conductor at the time, Loren Maazel wept at the end of the performance. Not a dry eye was found = mission accomplished. The Sanctus movement as Robert Page said, "Imagine when you enter the courts of the Lord. God sitting on the Throne, Gets up and walks toward you with arms open wide saying, Welcome my child, Well Done, Welcome home!"
There are two orchestras in this piece: A large, full orchestra which accompanies the full chorus, and a smaller chamber-orchestra which accompanies the Wilfred Owen poems. Hence: two conductors.
@@mckavitt I know what you mean, "Bee sloowlee leefted up dow long bleck arrm! towrring abuff heaven eh-bout to curze!" Yes DFD just 'makes it happen somehow' doesn't he?. Totally brilliant.
Television camera lens reception is so much better today than in was in the 1960's. But such is the nature of progress. Heather Harper is superb (Soprano who substituted for the preferred Galina Vishnevskaya) Pears is, Pears- the theme of war universal, the music rich, ominous and penetrating. Would have loved to have been part of this historic event. Excellent post.
Mr Baker passed away recently in Nov 2018 just a week after the 100th anniversary of the end of WW1 - here in this recording he is introducing a performance commemorating the 50th anniversary of the start of WW1
First violinist makes a moving tribute to his first meeting & later association w Jacqueline Du Pré in Christopher Nupen's WHO WAS JACQUELINE DU PRÉ? (DVD)
Thank you for your post, John! I saw this video at The Red House,during 2014 Aldeburgh Festival. I was very moved and was looking for this video. I am a Japanese painter, but since I saw this film, I have been drawing pictures on the theme of "War Requiem". would you mind me to share this video with those who watch my work? I am going to have an exhibition in St.Petersburg with this theme, and would like to introduce this film during my artist talk. It is absolutely,great music!
The camerawork is very good for television of that era but why couldn't they have recorded in stereo? Fortunately Decca made the first recording soon after the premiere (Britten conducting) in their finest tradition of outstanding technical achievement.
I think that Heather Harper is so much more telling than Vishnevskaya, the Russian soprano who appears on the Decca recording. Also like Thomas Hemsley very much..
When it was written, for the reopening of Coventry Cathedral, the three soloists were English, Russian, and German. Pears, Vishnevskaya, and Fischer-Dieskau.
As the conductor Gianandrea Noseda was *born* in April 1964, I don't think he is rightly mentioned here as the conductor in this performance of August 1964. Even as a a child prodigy, he looks older than four months. :-) So who IS the conductor here?
There are two orchestras in this piece: A large, full orchestra which accompanies the full chorus, and a smaller chamber-orchestra which accompanies the Wilfred Owen poems. Hence: two conductors.
There were hundreds of performances since the first performance, and they used British singers, and at the Proms all was different, including the choirs and orchestra. And it was also about money!! Bringing in a German singer would have been a lot more expensive for the BBC to fund on the license. Coventry was different and funded differently.
How beautifully articulate radio announcers (esp this one) sounded back then. Today? I’m away! PS. This announcer failed to mention the entry of Heather Harper!
@@patrickedwards5804 Britten never intended for that to become the practice - at the first performance in Coventry, he planned to conduct the whole thing, but developed shoulder issues, and decided to restrict himself to the chamber orchestra. Plenty of performances take place with just one conductor for both groups.
I wish Britten had conducted the whole thing. I've head that originally at the premiere he had planned to do that but since there were so much issues going on.... the quality of the choir, etc. that he passed of the main ensemble to Davies. Btw, I love your home videos of Tippett. So great that you posted those.
The distinguished announcer is at fault NOT to mention Heather Harper as she is the 3rd soloist & enters, albeit above, at the same time as the two men. I cannot help but think this omission was deliberate. PS: How the gorgeous British accent has changed (US "movies" no doubt). Even the word "American" was pronounced w a rolled 'r' before the latter word became the word the most pronounced in our 24-hour day on television, radio, the mouths of everyone, mostly the Americans themselves. :-(
Una Barry I am relieved to know that, but then why omit mention of her? Still stymied. Just because she was deliberately separated from the male soloists for reasons we all know is no reason not to mention her. She was so well-known, admired for both her voice, singing & professionalism.
@@mckavitt Richard Baker's death was announced today. He wasn't infallible, having once introduced Malcolm Williamson (in his presence) as Malcolm Arnold (despite having tried to train himself not to say 'Malcolm Arnold' all afternoon).
Makes its points extremely feebly and slowly; the Expressionist technique requires an intellectual compact with the audience which more visceral music can forego. It is also self-defeating: if you are going to create syncopated ugly noises to evoke war, can you at any point find empathy with an individual - as Tippett does? It seems that the answer is no. Generously-scored Church bells and fragments of Berg will only take us only so far. What we have here is a bourgeois parody of the idea of war. The real problems are :(1) Britten has no Christian belief, so is ill-suited to set the Mass . I guess he never even attended mass once, voluntarily (2) The poetry of Wilfred Owen while good is not up to a transcendental text. The Dies Irae is a poor imitation of the Symphony of Psalms - with none of the charm. Other parts, even Walton has done better; and the seventh dissonance at 17:51 would seem to require the services of a dentist. Here Britten is - hereditarily - in a position to know! It is to be hoped that he will pick up the tab for the anesthetic! Only a man who had not seen active service or thought seriously about the issues involved (not registering a conscientious objection, but preferring to flee to America to safety) could have written such a socially distanced, cold piece. And worse still - have pretended that he knew - emotionally - what he was doing! Poor Richard Baker: one feels for him!
It is about the horrors of war, so not meant to give instant pleasure. This music needs to be listened to a number of times, and over time the love and emptions begins to grow..
