Wearing poppies for the Requiem

Whereas rock music tends to make me feel ill, there is another kind of music that has the opposite effect. Sitting on an uncomfortable pew in an overheated church last night, we attended an exhilarating performance of Mozart's Requiem by the Ottawa Bach Choir, accompanied by a professional orchestra and with four young, professional soloists. The tenor was phenomenal, we thought. Expect to hear more of Pascal Charbonneau!

The conductor, Lisette Canton, had chosen to perform Mozart's unfinished Requiem in the version Robert Levin completed which includes a substantial Amen chorus straight after the Lacrymosa; there were other noticeable deviations from the usual, Süssmayer version besides. It's debatable whether all of these were written in the style of Mozart. Emma tells me that she once sang a rather Romantic version of this Requiem by the conductor of the choir she sang in. I daresay many an aspirant composer has felt like having a go. Even so there is little danger of ruining the basic harmonic progressions which owe their inspiration to the original genius and so for the most part last night we could mentally sing along. Sitting at the side and close enough to the front to see the conductor's face, I was sorely tempted to join in a few times.

Military top brass, government officials, Ambassadors and the like, were present in the pews reserved for VIPs. This concert, coinciding with Remembrance Day, was dedicated to the fallen warriors of the world's wars, or rather, according to the conductor's Introduction in the programme notes, to

remember those both far and near who have worked to bring peace into our world.

While everybody else was wearing red poppies, Chris and I proudly wore our white poppies shipped from Britain by the still existing Peace Pledge Union and the young couple from Kanata sitting next to us were duly curious and a little shocked, I think, to hear what they signified. Worn in memory of Conscientious Objectors and for the cause of peace-making without violence, they are considered subversive here.

Notwithstanding the occasion, it's my dad I remember while the Mozart's playing, because of the choir in Crailsheim, Germany, who in 1984, the year he died, performed this same work in his memory, with the famous Crailsheim siblings, Sabine Meyer and her brother Wolfgang, participating in the clarinet section of the orchestra. My dad was a war veteran too, who according to a letter he wrote in 1945 had "learned to hate" the German POW guards during the last few months of the war, but by the end of his life I know that he saw the Germans who were his fellow musicians as beloved friends, not his enemies.