Britten
War Requiem

“My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity..... All a poet can do today is warn.”

Benjamin Britten included these words by Wilfred Owen on the title page of his War Requiem. The work was first performed in 1962, in the rebuilt and newly consecrated Coventry Cathedral. The old cathedral had been virtually destroyed during the Blitz, and was rebuilt to a new design in a spirit of reconciliation after conflict. The War Requiem was an expression of Britten’s pacifism. He used the text of the Requiem Mass interspersed with poems by Wilfred Owen, who powerfully described his experiences in the trenches of the First World War. The three solo parts were written for singers from Germany, England and Russia (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Pears and Galina Vishnevskaya), thus including three of the nations most involved in the Second World War conflict. However Cold War tensions prevented the Russian singer from attending the first performance.

This concert commemorates the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and celebrates 60 years of peace in Western Europe. Our soloists are also German, English and Russian. The large chorus will be formed by choirs from two cities heavily damaged during the Blitz. The work requires a large orchestra, and the participation of the universally admired Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra will ensure a memorable performance of a modern masterpiece, one of the most enduring choral works of the last century.

The concert is presented in association with the Royal British Legion and is generously sponsored by the Britten-Pears Foundation, the National Lottery’s Awards for All programme and Hampshire County Council.

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Portsmouth Festival Choir

Victoria Savchuk
Soprano

The young Russian soprano Victoria Savchuk studied at the Gnesin Academy of Art in Moscow followed by studies at the Music Faculty of the State Maimonides Academy, also in Moscow, graduating in 2000. She has also taken part in Masterclasses with Galina Vishnevskaya and Sergei Leiferkus.

She has sung throughout Russia in concert as well as with the Radio and TV Symphony Orchestras of Moscow at venues including the Moscow Kremlin and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

Her operatic repertoire includes Micaëla Carmen, Marguerite Faust, Countess Almaviva Le nozze di Figaro, the Queen of the Night Die Zauberflöte, Musetta La bohème, Liù Turandot, Snegurochka The Snow Maiden, Tatyana Eugene Onegin, Kuma The Sorceress and Elvira Ernani.

This performance will mark Victoria Savchuk’s UK debut.

Justin Lavender
Tenor

Justin Lavender made his international debut in 1980 in The Pearl Fishers at the Sydney Opera House. This success led to engagements with many of the world’s great opera companies and orchestras. In 1990 he made debuts at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in Rossini’s spectacular masterpiece William Tell, and at the Vienna State Opera as Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute. His debut at La Scala Milan in the title role of Rossini’s Count Ory came the following year, quickly followed by Demodokos in Dallapiccola’s Ulisse at the Salzburg Festival.

In 2004 between concerts and recordings he sang Maurizio in Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur at the new opera house in Erfurt and returned again to the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, for the title role in Gounod’s Faust. This year he has just sung Don José in a new production of Carmen in Malaysia, and Alfredo in La Traviata.

He has worked on the concert platform with conductors such as Solti, Giulini, Haitink, Slatkin, Rhozhdestvensky, Dutoit, Frühbeck de Burgos, Elder and Abbado, and is particularly associated with Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius and Verdi’s Requiem which he sang at the tercentenary celebrations of the re-consecration of St Paul’s Cathedral. He is also increasingly in demand for performances of Britten’s War Requiem.

His many recordings include solo CDs with the Bournemouth Symphony of Mozart, Rossini and Donizetti arias as well as leading roles such as Arturo in Bellini’s Puritani, Fernand in Donizetti’s La Favorite, Mark in Smyth’s The Wreckers and Pierre Bezuhov in the only complete recording of Prokofiev’s War and Peace. He has just recorded Schnittke’s Faust Cantata with the Hamburg Symphony. He appears in Alan Parker’s film The Life of David Gale recently on general release.

For eight years Justin wrote a regular column for The Irish Examiner, and he has contributed articles and book reviews to newspapers and professional journals. He has given singing masterclasses and lectures all over the world, and has a large teaching practice based in England. He lives in Thames Ditton where he rows regularly on the Thames, being a founder member of the Newlands Rowing Club.

Gavin Carr
Baritone

Gavin Carr began his musical studies at King’s College, Cambridge, and made his début at English National Opera in 2000 as Aeneas Dido and Aeneas and St Ignatius Four Saints in Three Acts returning as Figaro The Barber of Seville opposite Lesley Garrett. His other operatic roles have included Zurga Les pêcheurs de perles at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon, Enrico Lucia di Lammermoor for Opéra Nomade, Tchaikovsky Shameful Vice by Finnissy at the Transfigured Nights Festival, Sydney, Curio Giulio Cesare for Opera Ireland and the title roles in Falstaff for the Centre de formation lyrique at the Paris Opéra La Bastille and Opera Project.

Concert engagements include the Aldeburgh, Brighton and Dartington Festivals, King’s College, Cambridge, the Snape Maltings, St John’s, Smith Square, and Westminster Abbey. In Germany, he has appeared with the Darmstadt Hofkapelle and at the International Handel Festival in Halle, whilst UK engagements have included performances with the City of London Sinfonia, the Manchester Camerata and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at venues including Birmingham Symphony Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St John’s, Smith Square, and the Usher Hall, Edinburgh, as well as performances with Carmina Burana with Ex Cathedra and many performances with choral societies.

A keen recitalist, Gavin Carr has studied the song literature with some of the greatest interpreters of the post–war–era — Ameling, Cuénod, Danco, Fassbänder, Hagegård, and Vishnevskaya — and to date lists the Aldeburgh Festival, Ravinia Festival and Ganz Hall, Chicago, the Fromm Institute, San Francisco, La Monnaie, Brussels, and the International Writers’ Festival, Melbourne, among his credits. He has sung regularly on BBC Radio 2’s Friday Night is Music Night, and further radio work includes Christus St Matthew Passion for ABC National Radio, Australia, for whom he also premièred Smetatin’s Skinless: Kiss of Angels with the Elison Ensemble.

Gavin Carr’s recording of Messiah with the English Symphony Orchestra under William Boughton is now available on Nimbus.

David Gibson
Conductor

David Gibson began his musical training as a chorister and Lay Clerk in Chichester Cathedral Choir. As an Organ Scholar, he later studied music at the universities of London and Sussex. He has worked extensively as a pianist and organist but has been a freelance conductor for the past twelve years, working with many of the top orchestras in the country, including the Philharmonia, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and the New London Sinfonia, which he founded in 1987. In 1991 he was appointed Assistant Director of Music and Chorus Master of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Since then he has worked for them as Guest Conductor, performing all the major G & S works together with Die Fledermaus and Orpheus in the Underworld throughout the UK. He is currently Musical Director of the Southampton Philharmonic Society, Basingstoke Choral Society, the Occam Singers and, since 1999 the Croydon Philharmonic Choir..

In 1994 he was appointed Musical Director of European Chamber Opera and took up a similar post with Opera Holland Park in 1996. He has also conducted extensively for Travelling Opera with repertoire including Carmen, Don Giovanni, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Magic Flute, Barber of Seville, La Bohème, Tosca, Madam Butterfly and Un Ballo in Maschera, performing in Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Barbados, and the USA.

Other engagements have included a return visit to the Barbados Opera Festival, a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Philharmonia and a series of concerts with the London Mozart Players as part of their 50th Anniversary. This included a world premiere of Michael Nyman's Suite from Drowning by Numbers. David has also worked as Musical Director in the West End for Raymond Gubbay in the highly successful D’Oyly Carte production of The Pirates of Penzance at the Queen’s Theatre.

Recent successes include further concerts with the London Mozart Players, a Michael Nyman opera at the Bridewell Theatre in London and a memorable performance of Belshazzar’s Feast with the New Queens Hall Orchestra. In 2002, he took up a new post as Director of Music of the Surrey Festival Choir, founded by Vaughan Williams.

He has recently been appointed Musical Director of the British Philharmonic Orchestra, performing in major venues throughout the UK and 2003 saw the release of a debut CD with the Occam Singers. Future plans include conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the Britten War Requiem in 2005.