Cast:
Copenhagen Phil
Ensemble Storstrøm/Danish Chamber Players
Conductor / Stefan Asbury
Soloists / Sofie Elkjær Jensen, soprano / Audun Iversen, baritone / Ian Bostridge, tenor
Choir / Copenhagen Boys' Choir, chamber choirs Hymnia, Graabrødre, Camerata and Musica

Benjamin Britten's War Requiem is one of the 20th century's most powerful musical testimonies. It is soul-shaking music that confronts the meaninglessness and human degradation of war.

When Benjamin Britten was asked in the early 1960s to write music for the inauguration of the rebuilt cathedral in Coventry – destroyed during bombing in 1940 – he created a work that goes far beyond the ceremonial.

War Requiem is not just a funeral mass, but a moral and humanistic response to the horrors of war. Britten, who was a pacifist, juxtaposes the Latin requiem text with poems by the war poet Wilfred Owen, written in the trenches during the First World War.

The work requires enormous musical forces: a large symphony orchestra, choir, boys' choir and three vocal soloists. Britten consistently exploits the contrasts between the intimate and the grand. Silence alternates with violent explosions of sound. Innocence stands side by side with raw depictions of death and destruction. The music accuses, grieves and consoles at the same time.

The concert features three notable soloists: Danish soprano Sofie Elkjær Jensen, Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen and British Ian Bostridge, one of the foremost Britten interpreters of our time. Britten's War Requiem reminds us of what we have to lose. And what we owe each other.