FOULDS: A WORLD REQUIEM
This massive work was adopted by the British Legion as the centrepiece of its Armistice Night celebrations from 1923 to 1926, usually held at the Royal Albert Hall, but has not been heard since. John Foulds’s heartfelt memorial to the war dead of all nations is here revived by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the American conductor Leon Botstein. This premiere recording of the work was made live at the concert performance on Remembrance Day 2007. An international cast includes Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Stuart Skelton and Gerald Finley together with massed choirs, off-stage fanfares, and the great organ of the Royal Albert Hall. Foulds stated that the work was conceived as ‘a tribute to the memory of the Dead – a message of consolation to the bereaved of all countries’ and in its ardent invocation of peace it leans towards the mystical.