BRITTEN’S WAR REQUIEM

USHER HALL

MUSIC THERE are so many logistical factors to add to the musical ones in a performance of Benjamin Britten’s War

Requiem: the displacement of the chamber orchestra against the main symphonic body; the siting and synchronising of the offstage boys choir; and ultimately the bringing together of all that in a work scored for massive diverse forces.

Thursday’s International Festival performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, National Youth Boys Choir of Scotland and Britten’s intended multi-national combination soloists under Andrew Davis gave us that and more. The sheer physical cohesiveness of the presentation – everyone sharp, alert and instantly responsive to Davis’s insistent lead – allowed this harrowing score to fulfil its maximum emotional impact.

The Edinburgh Festival Chorus was resplendent in every way, from the stabbing, whispered clarity of the Dies

Irae and hushed perfection of the Pie Jesu, to the rocket-fuelled exhilaration of Quam

olim Abrahae. Davis elicited crystalline virtuosity from the competing large and small units of the Philharmonia, on top of which the arresting purity of soprano Albina Shagimuratova, Toby Spence’s effortlessly versatile tenor, and the trenchant gravitas of German bass Matthias Goerne, took this performance to truly mindblowing heights.

The final Libera me – an ecstatic journey from dark ominous rumbles to the final distant chanting of the offstage boys voices, fired by the haunting text of Wifred Owen’s ‘Strange Meeting’ – was the ultimate clincher.