6 - Benjamin Britten: War Requiem

Composer Benjamin Britten wrote War Requiem in 1962 to mark the rebuilding of the war-damaged Coventry Cathedral. He used the traditional, codified Latin text of the Requiem - a mass for the dead, which he interspersed with verses by Wilfried Owen, a British officer who wrote his poems in the trenches of the First World War. More than 200 performers in the Vladislav Hall of Prague Castle joined their voices for a symbolic performance of a work that is rarely performed due to the difficulty of its execution and the large cast.