Britten's War Requiem has been a powerful symbol of remembrance ever since its premiere in the new Coventry cathedral in 1962, a performance that was echoed in Leonard Slatkin's choice of soloists for this recital with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Britten composed the three parts for singers from the UK, Germany and Russia; Slatkin's team of tenor John Mark Ainsley, baritone Thomas Mohr and soprano Elena Prokina reflected the composer's original wishes.

The singers inhabited different expressive worlds. Prokina heightened the liturgical grandeur of the choir; in contrast with this large-scale ritual, Ainsley and Mohr were accompanied by a separate chamber orchestra, revealing the intimate, human impact of war in Britten's settings of Wilfred Owen's poetry. The Requiem has been criticised for its bland fulfilment of the demands of a large-scale public commission - while the blood and thunder of the choral writing fit easily into the tradition of earlier requiems, particularly those by Verdi and Mozart, Owen's poetry and Britten's music for the two male soloists undercut the choir throughout the piece.

Nowhere was the contrast more stark than in the Offertorium. A comforting choral vision of Abraham and His Seed was grotesquely subverted by Owen's poem. Mohr and Ainsley sung chillingly of Abraham's sacrifice of his son, "and half the seed of Europe". Britten's setting parodies the choir's music, turning its expression and meaning inside out.

This ghoulish reversal was complete with the contribution from the off-stage New London Children's Choir, and their music of tainted innocence. All three soloists were on outstanding form, and every singer and player impressively committed. Slatkin paced his performance expertly, especially in building the huge Libera Me to the work's noisiest climax. The chorus was vividly dramatic, from the hushed unease of the opening Requiem to the blazing glory of the Hosanna.

There was no easy resolution at the end of the work. The soldiers' major-key sleep was interrupted by the dissonant intervals of the children's choir, and the music returned to the ambiguous atmosphere of its opening. This performance movingly communicated the ambivalence of Britten's negotiation between public mourning and private grief.