CBSO returns to Coventry Cathedral for Britten's War Requiem on Armistice Day, 64 years after its premiere

As the country marks Remembrance Sunday, Birmingham's orchestra is preparing to return to the place where it made musical history. The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem at Coventry Cathedral on Armistice Day, Wednesday 11 November, 64 years after it gave the work's world premiere there, the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce reports.

The concert also marks 50 years since Britten's death in 1976.

A premiere among the ruins

The CBSO gave the first performance of the War Requiem in 1962, at the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, built beside the ruins of the medieval cathedral that was destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. Britten, a lifelong pacifist, wrote it as a plea for peace, setting the Latin Mass for the dead alongside the First World War poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed a week before the Armistice in 1918.

The work has since become one of the most performed and recorded choral pieces of the 20th century, and its pairing of grief and reconciliation has made it a natural choice for anniversaries of both world wars.

"It demands to be heard"

Emma Stenning, the CBSO's chief executive, said: "War Requiem is not a comfortable piece. It is, as Britten intended, a reflection on war and a cry for peace, and in many ways could not be more prescient, or more urgently needed from an orchestra right now. We are not staging it as an act of nostalgia. We are staging it because it demands to be heard."

She said that, with 2026 marking 50 years since the composer's death, "it felt natural to stage the piece that CBSO originally premiered".

"We are Birmingham's orchestra, and we celebrate the creative identity of the Midlands as a whole," she added. "This kind of event, dominated by such a sense of place and history, reminds us that the big artistic statements don't just happen in London, Edinburgh or Cardiff, they happen all over the country."

Then on to Europe

After Coventry, the CBSO and its music director, Kazuki Yamada, will take the orchestra on tour to Brussels, Luxembourg and Lucerne.

The War Requiem is a cornerstone of the CBSO's 2026-27 season, which is bookended by Mahler symphonies and includes world premieres, the start of a full cycle of all nine of Beethoven's symphonies, and new partnerships with the collaborative artists Alice Sara Ott, Jess Gillam and Rushil Ranjan. The season also brings the orchestra's first Composer in Residence, Anna Clyne.

A message for today

Concerts held around the National Day of Remembrance offer, in the orchestra's words, a space to come together and reflect on the need for peace, tolerance and unity, and the work's message remains as relevant now as it was in the Cold War years when it was written.

For Birmingham audiences, it is also a reminder of how deep the CBSO's roots run in the region's history. Full details of the season are on the orchestra's website, cbso.co.uk.