It took a committed pacifist—the 20th-century British composer Benjamin Britten—to imagine a Requiem Mass devoid of that revered genre’s pious sanctity and then turn his setting of the Requiem into a passionate anti-war oratorio. Commissioned to consecrate the newly constructed Coventry Cathedral in 1962, the much-lauded but infrequently performed “War Requiem” was given a searing and surprisingly emotional performance by the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus Saturday (June 5) under the masterful direction of Music Director Steven Schick.

La Jolla Symphony and Chorus.

^{Courtesy photo}

Coventry required a new cathedral because the German Luftwaffe destroyed its historic,14th-century Cathedral of St. Michael and most of the city center in a devastating1940 bombing raid. The Anglo-American combined air forces returned this “favor” in the 1945 fire-storm bombing of Dresden and its resplendent Baroque Frauenkirche.

Britten and his partner, tenor Peter Pears, spent the war years as registered conscientious objectors, touring small towns across Great Britain to raise morale. In the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen, a World War I British officer who was killed at the front only a week before the 1918 Armistice, Britten found the interpretive lens for his Coventry oratorio.

Like an unrelenting Oxford debater, the composer has Owen’s nine poems regularly interrupt the liturgical integrity of the Requiem text to refute its redemptive claims and replace it with the devastating imagery of war’s carnage. Owen himself claimed not to be concerned with the art of poetry: “My subject is war and the pity of war.” And this is the subject of the “War Requiem.”

In the “Offertorium,” for example, the full choir invokes the intercession of St. Michael (Coventry’s parton saint, an irony Britten no doubt appreciated) in a cocky, confident fugue to lead the dead souls from the abyss into blissful eternal light, according to the Divine promise given to “Abraham and his seed forever.” And at this juncture, Britten introduces the chilling poem “So Abram rose, and clave the wood,” in which Owen retells the Biblical account of the Abraham and Isaac sacrifice, except now the prideful Abraham refuses to sacrifice the ram caught in the thicket, “but slew his son, -And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”

In the “Dies Irae,” when the soprano soloist and chorus laud the Deity with extravagant, lurching—almost Expressionistic—exclamations (the “Rex tremendae majestatis”), Britten follows this theological preening with the baritone and tenor cheekily intoning Owen’s ironic soldier-banter poem “Out there, we talked quite friendly up to death.”

Yet out of these polemics Britten’s profound humanism emerges, attired in some of his most striking and profound music. As conductor of the vast resources needed to mount the “War Requiem,” large orchestra, mixed chorus, children’s chorus, three soloists and an ancillary chamber ensemble, Schick integrated every participant gracefully and kept most of his balances in just alignment. On occasion he permitted his orchestra, which sounded more cohesive and polished than I have ever heard it, to overpower the chorus arrayed behind them. His unfailing sense of rhythmic propulsion kept the 86-minute opus vibrant every single minute.

The work’s three soloists have unusually pivotal responsibilities, because the tenor and baritone interpret nearly all of Owen's poetry and the soprano acts as a celestial cheerleader for the chorus. At the first performance, the soloists were Peter Pears, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Heather Harper, three of the most noted singers of their generation.

Fortunately, La Jolla had two outstanding singers in soprano Kathleen Halm and bass-baritone Abdiel González. González projected rich, passionate melodic volleys that resonated vividly in a room—UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium--notorious for its dull, dry acoustics, yet there was nothing stentorian about his technique. In “So Abram Rose,” he conjured its drama with shattering vigor, yet he deftly mixed ardor and sorrow in aptly burnished tones for “After the blast of lightning from the East.” If he takes care of his astonishing vocal instrument, this young singer from Puerto Rico has a great career awaiting him.

I was concerned about Halm’s vocal waver in her initial “Dies Irae” solo, but when she got to the “Lacrimosa” with its powerful, arched phrases rising against the full orchestra, my trepidation vanished. Her robust, well-supported phrases competed against the orchestra without the slightest sacrifice of lustrous tone and ample color. In the “Libera me,” tenor Chad Frisque poignantly articulated Britten’s hushed, thorny melodic tracery, but when paired with González in their frequent duos, he lacked the strength and brilliance in his upper range to match his colleague.

Although the La Jolla Symphony Chorus started timorously, both the golden hue of its mellow, unaccompanied “Kyrie” and its confident, full-throated “Hosanna in excelsis” revealed how well David Chase had prepared his choristers. Chase also conducted the smaller chamber ensemble that Britten assigned to accompany the male soloists. In the Coventry premiere, the composer himself took this modest but essential role.

The only weak link in this performance was the unfocused, pedestrian contribution of the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choristers, although in the opening strains of the “Offertorium,” director Martin Green’s boy sopranos hinted at that vibrant English boy-choir timbre so beloved by Britten. Most of the time these young singers were simply treading water, giving little indication that they understood what they were singing.

If this performance of the “War Requiem” was indeed a San Diego premiere—and my memory of the local music scene hazily confirms this claim—it is both welcome and long overdue. Kudos to the intrepid vision of Schick and his cohorts, who continually upstage San Diego’s better funded and more professionally endowed musical organizations.

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