Giulini - Britten: War Requiem (1963)

While I thought this was quite a good recording of Britten's masterpiece, it wouldn't be my first choice. The choral singing is vividly caught in the recording; the soloists, on the other hand, sound rather backwardly placed in the overall sound picture. The recording was made at a concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1969, and while the excitement and spontaneity of a concert performance are well captured, there are drawbacks as well: coughs and sniffles from the audience are at times obtrusive, and in the excitement of the moment the baritone slips up in his first duet with Pears, where he incorrectly sings "laughed" instead of "leagued". Interesting to listen to as a one-off, but I'd go for one of the excellent studio recordings available - Hickox on Chandos, or the composer's own incomparable recording from 1963 - for repeated listening.

The War Requiem will always be a beautiful piece, and it would take a lot to spoil it. However, I did not think this CD has captured it at its best. When the choir is in full song the lower vocal parts get lost - the balance is very weighted towards the sporanos. For example, in the Dies Irae section of the Libera Me, the sopranos dominate, at the expense of the lower parts. Also, in the In Paradisum the choir is a barely audible low rumble, until the sopranos come in high and clear. The atmosphere of the live performance has been fully captured in this recording, which comes complete with aauthentic udience coughing. So, if you like to pretend that your living room is really the packed Royal Albert Hall, this is the CD for you!

This extraordinary performance took place in London's Royal Albert Hall in April, 1969, seven years after the Coventry world premiere and six years after Britten laid down his own famous recording for Decca, and I think it combines the best of both worlds.

Anyone familiar with Giulini's work with the Philharmonia will know what to expect here and won't be disappointed. Even allowing for the live occasion and the unfamiliarity of the score, the orchestra scarcely put a foot wrong and sound every bit as comfortable with the music as their LSO colleagues on the Decca set. Of course, a closer look at the credits on this disc reveals the involvement of Britten himself. As well as conducting the Melos Ensemble in the war poetry passages, I daresay he worked with Giulini in preparing the performance overall. Indeed, comparing the timings of this set with the Decca shows that they are almost identically paced throughout except for the Libera Me, which finds the composer himself a touch more expansive.

The Philharmonia Chorus of 1969 was still in the hands of the legendary chorus master, Wilhelm Pitz, and what a thrill it is to hear their voices ringing around the hall in the Dies Irae, Sanctus and Libera Me. The great eruption of 'Dies Irae' after the baritone's 'Be slowly lifted up...' is every bit as terrifying as it should be; such precision, such power! A word of praise here also for the Wandsworth School Boys' Choir whose pure and haunting tone is captured more successfully than most on record (Hickox's Chandos set springs to mind as the obvious exception). Placed high up in the RAH's gallery (is there a more appropriate hall in the UK for this work?), they sound suitably disconnected from the real world. Their ghostly return at the end of the Offertorium and their searing entry in the In Paradisum are especially memorable.

No complaints from me about the soloists either. Woytowicz is similar in tone and style to Vishnevskaya but without the Russian's paint-blistering volume and vibrato, and the treacherous leaps across the stave seem to hold no fears for her. Hers is probably the most satisfying account on record, infinitely preferable to Harper for Hickox or Soderstrom for Rattle (both singers being decidedly past their prime on those recordings), while Vishnevskaya remains something else altogether! Pears is still in fine voice and sounds, by turns, both more forceful and more mellifluous than he did for Decca. His way with these words is simply beyond comparison. Like Woytowicz, Wilbrink also reminded me of his illustrious predecessor, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In fact, his first solo ('Bugles sang...') made me forget for a moment that I wasn't listening to Britten's own recording. His slight accent is not inappropriate and he shows a great deal of empathy with the words, even if he does fluff one of them in his first duet with Pears.

Other reviewers have mentioned the sound quality and it is true to say that this disc certainly is not a tour de force of sound engineering. There is a variable degree of what sounds like tape hiss and a couple of split-second drop-outs in the left channel during the Requiem Aeternam. The balance gives the impression of being seated in the centre of the hall's upper tier, looking diagonally down towards the orchestra and soloists, just about level with the higher ranks of the main chorus and a little below the boys' choir. There are audible coughs and on-stage rustles and shuffles (applause is omitted, by the way) but nothing over and above what a regular concert-goer will be used to. If you listen with headphones you'll pick up much more of this than you would through speakers. On the other hand, this recording gives a much better aural image of the scale of this work than Britten's own Decca recording. The Decca set is incomparable in every way except the sound which I have always found too close and lacking in depth and bass impact (it also suffers from tape hiss). By 'panning back' this BBC disc gives me a better sense of the performance space and the three separate 'planes' (the soldiers, the Mass, the boys), and allows the full, tragic grandeur of Britten's music to register with immense impact. The RAH's acoustic really comes into its own, giving a pleasing resonance and reverberation and the recording allows the most heavily-scored passages to expand without a hint of distortion. There is also a surprisingly satisfying bass response with timpani, bass drum and organ pedals all coming through very well. Overall, I think the pros add immeasurably to the impact of this performance to the point where you will soon overlook the cons.

In conclusion, I think this is a highly recommendable recording which no lover of this extraordinary masterpiece should be without. More than with any other recording, and despite its sonic imperfections, I was struck time and again by the thought that this is what the premiere must have sounded like in Coventry Cathedral nearly fifty years ago. The only real disappointment must be that this work's incredibly simple message still goes largely unheeded.