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In the centenary year of the end of the First World War, the World Orchestra for Peace – founded by Georg Solti as an expression of international musical harmony – returns to the Proms.

In 1940 the Japanese government, requested a piece from Britten to mark the 2,600th anniversary of their Mikado dynasty. In the resulting work, written in a few short weeks, Britten revealed not only his private pacifist convictions
but also his Christian faith. With its three movements taking their titles from the Catholic Requiem Mass – Lacrymosa, Dies irae, Requiem aeternam – and its charged moods of fury and struggle, the Sinfonia da Requiem was rejected by the Japanese government as a musical and cultural insult. It was premiered instead in 1941 at Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic under John Barbirolli, by which point all mention of the original commission had disappeared, leaving only a dedication: ‘In memory of my parents’.

Performed by The World Orchestra for Peace, conducted by Donald Runnicles.