“The most successful polemical art succeeds first as art. Benjamin Britten demonstrated that with his War Requiem,” writes Brian Wise on Sunday (4/27) at WQXR’s blog. “Robert Spano will make the case on Wednesday, April 30 at Carnegie Hall when he conducts the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.… Britten composed his War Requiem for the 1962 rededication of the cathedral in Coventry, England, destroyed in a 1940 air raid.… His Requiem’s great innovation lies in the blending of the traditional Latin Mass for the Dead and nine poems by Wilfred Owen about World War I.… ‘Britten was aggressively pacifistic and taking the text of the Latin Mass for the Dead and refracting it through this poetry speaks eloquently to the ravages and horrors of war,’ Spano told WQXR’s Jeff Spurgeon.… The Atlanta Symphony’s Carnegie Hall show happens to fall on the birthday of Robert Shaw, who was the orchestra’s hugely influential music director from 1967 to 1988.… Directed by Norman Mackenzie, the ASO Chorus remains an all-volunteer organization, whose members are said to come from across Atlanta’s spectrum of jobs and backgrounds.”
Posted April 28, 2014
