War Music

Traditional Vietnamese songs arranged by the Grammy awarded Silkroad Ensemble from the PBS film The ""Vietnam War: A Film By Ken Burns & Lynn Novick."

This performance is a revelation. Philip Reed, in his authoritative note, points out that, unbeknown to many, Britten and Giulini had a mutual respect for and an admiration of each other’s work. Here they combine to give a performance that is a true Legend, as this BBC series has it. Giulini’s reading is as dramatic and viscerally exciting as any I have heard. The music leaps from the page new-minted in his thoroughgoing, histrionically taut hands, the rhythmic tension at times quite astonishing. For instance, the sixth movement, ‘Libera me’, is simply earth-shattering in its effect, every bar, every word, every instrument sung and played to the hilt – and so it is throughout, with the live occasion added to the peculiar, and in this case peculiarly right, acoustics of the Albert Hall adding its own measure of verite to the inspired occasion.

Recorded live in June 2017 at the magnificent Liceu Theatre in Barcelona, this DVD is the companion to Joyce DiDonato's award-winning album In War and Peace: Harmony through Music. Seeking answers to the existential question "In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?", it makes a compelling piece of music theatre as DiDonato journeys through arias by Handel, Purcell, Monteverdi, Leo and Jommelli with Il Pomo d'Oro and conductor Maxim Emelyanychev…