Landscapes of War

Long considered to be one of his finest works, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem of 1962 can be difficult to bring off successfully, even with the most skilled and dedicated professional musicians. All the more reason, then, to cheer UC Berkeley’s stirring and spectacular performance last Wednesday, before a large, enrapt audience in Zellerbach Hall. UC’s Marika Kuzma, who conducted, got it splendidly right. She and a supporting cast of hundreds — including the University Chorus & Chamber Chorus, the Alumni Chorus, the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, a large orchestra, organ, and soprano, tenor, and baritone soloists — thoroughly vitalized the 90-minute work.

Britten composed the War Requiem to celebrate the reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral, which was devastated by Nazi air raids during World War II and had to be completely rebuilt. He chose to set the text of the Latin Requiem Mass, inlaying it like shards in a mosaic, with the poignant, personal, antiwar verse of English poet Wilfrid Owen, who was killed in the trenches of World War I at the age of 25.

Owen’s poetry takes us through some of war’s mental and emotional landscapes: the wrenching sorrow of death, the self-deluding heroics of combat, the arrogance of force, the wasteful violence of destruction, and, finally, the pity we feel for the lives forever lost and unfulfilled. These musical settings are sung by the tenor and baritone soloists, accompanied by a chamber ensemble of 12 instruments separated from the orchestra and gathered around the two singers.

Britten’s vocal writing can be florid, and does not always easily convey the mood and meaning of Owen’s verse. It sometimes requires more dramatic and nuanced singing than these two soloists were able to produce. But baritone Christòpheren Nomura was often deeply affecting, as in his final solo and in his singing of “after the blast of light’ning,” from the Sanctus. Tenor Brian Staufenbiel lacked vocal heft, and his words were not always clear, but his lovely, high-tenor vocalism was often used effectively, and the two men sang well together.

Lyrics to Comfort the Distressed

The Latin sections are keyed to the English poetry, offering solace to the afflicted and threatening divine punishment to the troublemakers. These texts are scored for full chorus with orchestra, and form the backbone of the work. Soprano soloist Janice Chandler forged a link between the abstract Latin sentiments and the more intimate, direct feelings of the English poetry. She sang beautifully, her bright, burnished, expressively charged voice acting as a force to bind the work together. Her solo in the Lacrimosa was perhaps the most moving and beautiful single episode in the entire work.

All these diverse strands lend the music a great variety of textures and tempos, across a wide emotional spectrum. Conductor Kuzma held the musical ebb and flow sensitively under control, allowing the tension between thoughtful, elegiac inwardness and impetuous, edgy, forward momentum to find a gradual resolution in the prayerful finale. My only regret is that there wasn’t at least one more performance to carry this level of commitment and realization to another audience ready to be enthralled.