Name: NOSPR Charles Dutoit
Start: 2019-10-03T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2019-10-03T00:00:00.000Z
Location: NOSPR

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Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra

Orchestra

Others

Polish National Youth Choir

Warsaw Boy's Choir

Conductor

Charles Dutoit

Singer

Evelina Dobračeva

Soprano

Robin Tritschler

Tenor

Dietrich Henschel

Baritone

Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir

NOSPR / Charles Dutoit

Katowice

Poland

NOSPR

Public

War Requiem, Op. 66

Larissa Andrea Pereira

Approved

The Cathedral Church of St Michael in Coventry was ruined on 14 November 1940, bombed during one of the heaviest Luftwaffe raids of the Blitz campaign. The foundation stone of the new cathedral, built next to the remains of the old church, was laid 16 years after the war. In May 1962, the cathedral was consecrated, a ceremony marked by the premiere of Britten’s War Requiem. The composer combined the text of the Requiem Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen, a tragic poet-soldier who fell in battle on the French front just before the Compiègne armistice. As a token of ultimate reconciliation – after two world-wide conflicts – the intention was that the soloists should be of three nationalities: British (Peter Pears), German (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), and Russian (Galina Vishnevskaya). The Soviet Minister of Culture did not permit Vishnevskaya to leave the country, so she had to be replaced by Heather Harper (Irish). “No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning,” wrote Owen in his Anthem for Doomed Youth, a poem Britten set in the first part of the piece. The premiere was followed by a telling silence: at the composer’s request, there was no applause after the performance. The idealistic goal has nonetheless been achieved: today, War Requiem is regarded as the most powerful music manifesto of pacifism, not only among Britten’s works.

English

NOSPR / Charles Dutoit by Britten, Thu 03 Oct 2019, From (2019/2019), Conductor Charles Dutoit, NOSPR, Katowice, Poland

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