Famous for his operas, Benjamin Britten had been planning something new for some time when he was invited in 1958 to compose a work to celebrate the rebuilding of the bombed Coventry Cathedral. The composer saw the resulting War Requiem as a force for unification, choosing his three soloists from the UK, USSR and Germany, the countries he believed to have suffered the most during World War Two.
A work scheduled to last nearly two hours could be excused for starting with a long slow build up, but Havergal Brian’s massive Gothic Symphony (the longest symphony ever composed) bursts onto the scene with a brisk and bustling march-like flourish, contrasted briefly with a delicate violin solo that reminds us that this is very much an English composition.
