Two contrasting soundscapes: the ‘War Requiem’ opened the MiTo festival

The finale of the War Requiem brings reconciliation through music, but not through man. Whilst the choirs and the soprano sing ‘Requiescant in pacem’, the tenor and baritone repeat, as if in a trance, ‘Let us sleep now’. They are two soldiers who died in the war, and one killed the other: ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend’. Composed for the reconstruction of Coventry Cathedral, which was ‘Coventrised’ by the Luftwaffe in 1940, Benjamin Britten’s work stands as the most theatrical of masses or the most sacred of theatres; the only possible comparison is Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, an obvious source of inspiration and even explicitly cited. Two sonic worlds stand in opposition to one another and increasingly overlap, until they become intertwined: the soprano, the choir and the children’s choir, accompanied by the large orchestra, sing the Missa pro defunctis in Latin; the tenor and baritone, with a small ensemble of fourteen instruments plus percussion, perform the English poems of Wilfred Owen, who fell in France a week before the 1918 armistice. Britten wanted one of the three soloists to be Anglo-Saxon, one German and one Russian. At the premiere on 30 May 1962, the soloists were his partner Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (who ended up sobbing), but not Galina Visnevskaya, who was prevented from travelling by the Soviet regime and replaced at the very last minute by Heather Harper.

Every performance of the War Requiem – always far too rare, given the demanding nature of the score, not least in terms of the resources required – is an event. Even setting aside Britten’s pacifism, the powerfully potent message of the text and its enduring relevance, it is the musical quality that proves, time and again, to be overwhelming – quite apart from all the condemnations for ‘offending Darmstadt’ and ‘neglecting the avant-garde’, which today seem truly far-fetched in the face of one of the most intense masterpieces of the twentieth century. It is therefore excellent that it was chosen to open the 20th edition of MiTo – on Sunday in Milan and Monday in Turin – the first under the artistic direction of Speranza Scappucci. It was a wonderful concert. It is well known that the more ‘written’ the score, the better Simone Young brings it to life: this conductor is no prodigy of imagination, but she delivers the piece with calm authority, a fine differentiation of sound layers and an attention to secular ‘theatricality’ that is one of her hallmarks: after all, in tackling the sacred works of Britten, as with Verdi, she could not (and quite rightly did not wish to) forget that she is a consummate musical dramatist.

The performance by the RAI National Symphony Orchestra was remarkable – in fine form and with an XXL line-up – as were the choirs of the Regio in Turin, although, on this occasion, the reviewer fell victim to La Scala’s idiosyncratic acoustics: sitting at the front of the stalls, the choir’s voices came across as curiously faint. The trio of soloists were also spot on. Nicky Spence was magnificent: he really does bring Pears to mind, and whilst from a strictly vocal point of view that might not be a compliment, his delivery, style and intensity are remarkable. Bo Skovhus seemed a little tired, but his charisma remains intact. Elena Guseva was more uncertain, at times even in her intonation, though it must be said that the soprano part is truly treacherous. An audience of guests who, for this auspicious occasion, were discovering Britten for the first time seemed a little lost at the start but were ultimately won over, for the masterpiece is infallible. The semi-cold one, who was singing at an obviously exorbitant volume – she must have been deaf – should also have been given a telling-off for suddenly starting to sing in English at one point: but surely one could spend five minutes on Wikipedia before going to a concert to avoid driving everyone else up the wall?