Daniel Harding conducts Britten's War Requiem

The Cleveland Orchestra combines its considerable orchestral forces with two choruses, three internationally renowned vocal soloists, and maestro Daniel Harding to perform Benjamin Britten's monumental War Requiem, a stark and poignant call for peace written in the wake of two devastating World Wars. Commissioned for the 1962 reconsecration of Coventry Cathedral after its destruction two decades earlier, the War Requiem interweaves the text of the Latin Requiem (sung by the choirs and soprano Tamara Wilson) with harrowing poems by Wilfred Owen (performed by tenor Andrew Staples and baritone Ludwig Mittelhammer), a British soldier and poet who decried the horrors of battle until he was killed just days before the World War I armistice.

Photo © Yevhen Gulenko / The Cleveland Orchestra