It is hard to realize that Benjamin Britten's authoritative reading on Decca—a set which became a classical best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic—is now over 20 years old. EMI have done splendid work presenting the new generation of Britten performances, often in contrast to the composer's own interpretation on record but hardly in conflict, more in amplification, and this is another superb example. Last June I attended an inspired performance of the War Requiem in St Edmundsbury Cathedral as part of the Aldeburgh Festival, when Simon Rattle conducted this same choir and orchestra, and I am glad to report that the studio sessions earlier in the year have captured a comparable dedication. At the end of the live performance there was a pause of total silence before applause broke out longer than I can ever remember at any event, and Sir Peter Pears was one who specially noted that. We were almost shell-shocked, identifying with the victims of the First World War so agonizingly re-created, the subjects of Wilfred Owen's poems. As in the Cathedral so on record Rattle's fresh approach brings new appreciation of the inspired matching of individual human experience in the English poems against the eternal truths of the liturgy of the Requiem in Latin.
Maybe the most radical difference between Rattle's interpretation and that of Britten himself lies in that relationship, for where the soprano soloist Galina Vishnevskaya, in her singing of the solos in Latin took an oracular view in a commanding enunciation of the words, distancing herself slightly, Elisabeth Soderstrom for Rattle is clearly presenting human emotions and responses just as much as the two male soloists are in the Owen poems. One registers more vitally the meaning of the Latin from her very first entry in ''Liber scriptus'' but even more strikingly in ''Lacrymosa'', ''Sanctus'', ''Libera me'', and most of all in ''Benedictus''.
The male soloists too bring many points of new illumination, a splendid duo in Robert Tear and Thomas Allen. Together—at a speed set by Rattle faster than Britten's own—they bring out the black humour of the rollicking setting of ''Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death'', making it almost a parody of a music-hall song, which could well have been Britten's idea. The balancing of their voices is not always quite consistent, for the first incursion of tenor and chamber group for the setting of ''What passing bells'' brings a sudden close focus, an exaggeration of the contrast between the different sets of forces deliberately presented by the producer, John Culshaw, in the earlier recording. After that the solo male voices recede a little for a more normal balance until the final setting of ''Strange Meeting'', when Tear is again rather close. Noticeable as the discrepancy may be, it does not get in the way of the interpretation and indeed may enhance it, both in the closeness of the first song and in the extra hush of half-tone which after that it generally allows, as with Tear when ''Move him into the sun'', in its alternations with ''Lacrymosa'', leads to an agonized last phrase on ''break earth's sleep at all''.
Allen, not surprisingly, sounds more idiomatically at h ome in such a setting as ''Bugles sang'', and he gains considerably over Fischer-Dieskau by the slight distancing, when in the ''Benedictus'' setting, ''After the blast of lightning'', the despair of the words is made the more chilling, leading to a blaze of trumpets for the return of ''Hosanna''. He is superb too in the cry of ''May God curse thee'', violent at the end of ''Be slowly lifted up''.
There are points too the other way—as for example the sweetness of legato that Sir Peter Pears ach ieves on the high F sharps at the start of the ''Agnus Dei''—but the whole performance stands up superbly with some splendid singing from the CBSO Chorus, trained by the brilliant young simon Halsey. The choir of boys (from Christ Church Cathedral) is even finer and more responsive than the Highgate School Choir for Britten, as in their flexible view of the opening of the ''Offertorium'', which brings it very close to the Ceremony of Carols. The gain from the new digital recording is not quite what I expected. In many ways the earlier recording produced by Culshaw balances detail more clearly, as for example the interjections of different groups of brass, trumpets, trombones and horns. The new HMV recording brings rather less separation of detail, but for all that is extremely vivid, most excitingly so in the many percussion effects, for the extra range of bass gives a physically thrilling impact, on the bass drum for example.
It is a mark of Rattle's reading that he keeps such concentration while refusing to rush any fences. So it is that the returns of the ''Dies irae'' passage come with increasing incisiveness, so thatthe most powerful of all is te return of ''Dies irae'' in the final ''Libera me''. Rattle's control of rhythm allows more freedom than with Britten in the jazzy cross-rhythms and misplaced accents in the compound time of ''Quam olim Abrahae''. All in all, though no ones is going to pass over the historic Britten recording, this new one blazes the message of this masterly work with a freshness to have one hearing it as though for the first time.'