“Leaders of the Wichita Symphony Orchestra say scheduling Benjamin Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ for performances next weekend comes from a sense of cultural and historic obligation,” writes David Burke in Sunday’s (11/4) Wichita Eagle (Kansas). “ ‘We’ve been planning for this maybe as long as four years ago,’ symphony CEO Don Reinhold said, ‘when we looked at the calendar and realized that our Sunday concert would fall on the weekend of the 100th anniversary of the Armistice.’ The Wichita Symphony will join dozens of symphonies—including Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Colorado Springs, Toronto and Washington, D.C.—in performing the Britten on the same day, without any coordination or collaboration among the groups…. Britten’s ‘Requiem’ … puts music to the poetry of Wilfred Owen, a soldier who was killed in action a week before the Armistice…. Owen’s poetry is interspersed with the text of a traditional Latin mass…. The performances [led by Music Director Daniel Hege] are part of a citywide remembrance of the Armistice anniversary … by the symphony, Wichita Art Museum and the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.” Said Reinhold, “There are times when a symphony orchestra can be a voice of remembrance and memory and awareness.”
Posted November 6, 2018
