It demands to be heard: the CBSO return to Coventry Cathedral with Britten’s War Requiem for Remembrance Day in advance of a European tour

Coventry Cathedral [Photo: Garry Jones]

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is set to return to Coventry Cathedral for a performance of Britten’s War Requiem on Remembrance Day (11 November), also marking 50 years since Britten’s death. 

The CBSO gave the world premiere of the War Requiem at the Cathedral in 1962. The work was commissioned to mark the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, and the reconsecration marked by an arts festival that also included the premiere of Michael Tippett’s King Priam, and Bliss’s The Beatitudes (which had to be premiered in the Belgrade Theatre because of scheduling problems relating to the opening services and rehearsals for the War Requiem).

For the Remembrance Day performance, the CBSO’s music director, Kazuki Yamada conducts the orchestra, CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth Choir and Trinity Boys Choir with soloists Olga Peretyatko, Andrew Staples, and Christian Gerhaher.

Following the Coventry concert, Kazuki Yamada and the orchestra will give performances of the War Requiem in Brussels, Luxembourg and Lucerne as part of a European tour which includes concerts in Freiburg, Nuremberg, and Viersen (which is near Düsseldorf). Rather strikingly the CBSO Chorus and Trinity Boys Choir also taking part in the performances of the War Requiem on the tour.

CBSO Chief Executive Emma Stenning said: “War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. It is, as Britten intended, a reflection on war and a cry for peace, and in many ways could not be more prescient, or more urgently needed from an orchestra right now. We are not staging it as an act of nostalgia. We are staging it because it demands to be heard.”

Full details from the CBSO website.