LPO/Edward Gardner review – Britten’s pacifist War Requiem lands with a bitterness and snarling irony

Royal Festival Hall, London
Three fine soloists were joined by the excellent Tiffin Boys’ and Girls’ Choirs alongside the London Philharmonic Choir and the London Symphony Chorus whose pianissimo singing left us with a much-needed glimpse of hope

‘All a poet can do today is warn,” Wilfred Owen wrote in 1918. The London Philharmonic Orchestra, launching their new season In Search of Purpose, find it in Owen’s words, just as Benjamin Britten did in 1962 with the premiere of his War Requiem – a pacifist manifesto that doesn’t just mourn the dead, but rages at the senseless conflict that killed them, and cautions of “greater wars” yet to come.

It’s a curious starting point, a piece that stresses the limits of art as well as its capacity, but one depressingly, perennially pertinent. Originally cast to reflect the three main warring nations, the three solo roles once again reflected this topicality in Ukrainian-Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw, American tenor Paul Appleby (replacing an indisposed Allan Clayton), and German baritone Benjamin Appl.