War Requiem

Album by Benjamin Britten & Lynda Russell & Thomas Randle & Michael Volle & Scottish Festival Chorus & BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra & Martyn Brabbins

War Requiem is a large-scale choral work by English composer Benjamin Britten, composed and first performed in 1962. The work juxtaposes the Latin Requiem Mass with wartime poetry and is scored for soloists, chorus, boys' choir and orchestra, employing stark, often dissonant textures and spatial contrasts; it was written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and represents a major statement in Britten's mid-career output and in post-war British musical history.