Dresden-born composer, Sven Helbig’s Requiem A marks the 80th anniversary of the ending of World War II whilst remembering the bombing and destruction of the beautiful Saxon city of Dresden by allied forces on 13 February 1945.

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Central Hall, Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

Sven Helbig: Requiem A; Dresdner Kreuzchor, Trinity Boys’ Choir, Poznan Boys’ Choir, La Maîtrise de Garçons de Colmar, René Pape, London Contemporary Orchestra, cond Martin Lehmann, live electronics Sven Helbig; Central Hall, Westminster
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (4 October 2025)

The world première in Dresden early this year and the subsequent performance at Vienna's Heldenplatz received overwhelming praise and admiration for a work hailed as spiritual and thought-provoking punctuated by soulful and tender-loving moments.

Four renowned European choirs from Germany, UK, Poland and France came together to perform the London première of Sven Helbig's Requiem A together with the London Contemporary Orchestra (founded in 2008 by Robert Ames and Hugh Tieppo-Brunt) conducted by Martin Lehmann at Central Hall, Westminster. The performance also featured bass-baritone René Pape as soloist with live electronics by Sven Helbig punctuated by a video art scenario created by Icelandic-born film artist, Máni Sigfusson, thereby adding an immersive and dynamic visual dimension to the overall experience of hearing (and enjoying) the work.

Commemorating the bombing and destruction of Dresden in World War II (now 80 years ago) Requiem A received its world première early this year (Sunday, 9 February) at the Dresden Kreuzkirche (the largest sacred building in Saxony) with the Staatskapelle Dresden, Dresdner Kreuzchor and René Pape with Sven Helbig on live electronics. [see our interview with Sven Helbig about the work] In the presence of Auschwitz survivors, the work was subsequently performed three months later at Vienna’s Heldenplatz (Thursday, 8 May) featuring the Wiener Symphoniker and the Dresdner Kreuzchor.

As conflict, terror and devastation have become part of everyday life for thousands of law-abiding citizens in hotspots round the world, Helbig responsibly focuses upon the ‘beast in man’ in Requiem A whose scenario revolves round grief but also builds upon the beginning of something new. This is what the vowel ‘A’ indicates in the title - the first letter of the alphabet symbolizing ‘beginning’/ ‘renewal’.

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Sven Helbig - Central Hall Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

The vowel ‘A’, in fact, also stands for such German words as Anfang (beginning), Ache (ashes), Aufbruch (departure) and Atem (breath). The work, in fact, moves throughout all three. Key words in the text which seeks a way out of mourning and into life, central to the work’s overall themes moving from grief and destruction towards reconciliation, hope and a new life. Interestingly, in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Dictionary, the vowel ‘A’ equates to being ‘the noblest and most original of all sounds - the sound that a child first and foremost utters and learns to produce’.

Harbouring a philosophical side to life, Helbig inquired of a doctor how he deals with the death of patients. He simply replied: ‘You cannot die with them.’ Therefore, Helbig clearly states the dead need the living to mourn their passing to remember them. And for Helbig, music, especially in relation to Requiem A, opens a space to think and absorb this pertinent statement.

Reflecting on the war-torn years, Helbig enjoyed many conversations with his grandfather (now 98 years old and living in Eisenhüttenstadt) about the war. As a teenager he fought on the Front thereby witnessing the death of many of his comrades. For years he was silent on the subject but latterly has opened his soul to his grandson about the horror and destruction of warfare which, I feel, manifests itself in Requiem A. Such conversations with his grandfather inspired Helbig in his personal reflections on Europe’s dark period of history together with multiple conversations he shared with his daughter, Ida, who, in fact, came up with the idea of the vowel ‘A’ in the title of the work. She was 15 at the time.

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Central Hall Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

Born in 1968, Helbig grew up in Eisenhüttenstadt, an industrialized city situated in the Oder-Spree district of the state of Brandenburg in East Germany on the border with Poland. Founded in 1950, it served as a model socialist city and was known as Stalinstadt between 1953 and 1961 in honour of Joseph Stalin who died in 1953 but renamed Eisenhüttenstadt during the de-Stalinization campaign in East Germany.

Therefore, if Requiem A meditates on human endeavour and the aspect of a bright new dawn breathing a fresh and settled life through profound love and happiness following World War II, I think it’s fair to say that the scenario’s not too distant from the ending and message to found in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung in which redemption comes through love witnessing the destruction of the Gods and their corrupt power which is ultimately achieved by Brünnhilde’s ultimate act of self-sacrificial love. Through her fiery immolation, she purifies the cursed ring and brings about the cleansing of the world from the Gods’ flawed order which ultimately leads to a new dawn for humanity and, hopefully, a harmonious and fruitful future.

A man of many parts, Helbig’s not only a composer but also a stage director and music producer. He studied at the Carl-Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden and began his musical career as a clarinettist later taking up guitar, piano and drums thus paving the way for him to progress to jazz, rock and, ultimately, electronic music.

A pioneering soul, Helbig founded the Dresden Symphony Orchestra with horn player, Markus Rindt, in 1996, which became the first European symphony orchestra to perform exclusively contemporary music. He left the orchestra in 2007 to devote himself to his own musical work thus creating orchestral pieces, choral works and compositions for electronic music while his début Pocket Symphonies was released by Deutsche Grammophon in 2013 [see Robert's review]. Four years later, he toured Europe and North and South America with I Eat the Sun and Drink the Rain, a song-cycle of ten dark and melancholic pieces for choir and electronics based round lyrics predominantly written by Helbig. [see Robert's 2016 interview with Helbig on the work].

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Martin Lehmann, Rene Pape - Central Hall Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

An illuminating and enlightened composer for sure, Helbig parallels fellow contemporary Dresden composer, Torsten Rasch, who was also a member of the renowned Dresdner Kreuzchor before going on to study composition and piano at the Carl-Maria von Weber University of Music.

Both composers have collaborated with London-based synth-pop duo, the Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe) with Helbig acting as producer of the soundtrack for The Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent film of the same name of 1925. The project, which began with a live performance in 2004, was created in the spirit of Eisenstein's desire for new scores to be made for the film to keep it fresh and interesting to engage with modern-day audiences.

A riveting score, it combines orchestral grandeur with pulsating electronics performed by the Pet Shop Boys and the Dresdner Sinfoniker conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer with orchestrations by Torsten Rasch. Commissioned by London’s ICA in 2006, Potemkin sparked a great deal of interest in Rasch’s music after it received a ‘live’ screening in Trafalgar Square.

Philosophically speaking, Helbig’s inspired in his work by the Pythagoreans especially when writing Requiem A. They harbour the opinion that the root of nature’s eternal flow lies in the ‘Tetraktys’ with fourths, fifths and octaves forming a harmonic foundation symbolizing the fundamental principles of the natural world, the harmony of the cosmos and, indeed, the ascent to the divine.

For instance, this musical notation can be clearly heard in the strings at the beginning and end of the bass arias and at the start of the Introit and Sanctus while strings, winds and percussion create the impression of a quiet, sleeping breath that gradually intensifies culminating in the final movement entitled ‘Atem’ (breath).

Helbig repeatedly uses parallel fifths, too, carrying the idea of the flow of life into the overall sound of the choral writing. Upon this foundation, the motifs of grief and loss wrestle with those of breath and life. Therefore, in the final chorus, the life motif prevails while grief and powerlessness are woven into the counterpoint and supported by more consonant harmonies.

The employment of synthesisers aided by electronic elements and generated frequencies soaring above or rumbling beneath the writing for choir and orchestra ranging from deep basses to shimmering voices vividly depicts Helbig’s musical style. In fact, technology for Helbig in his writing is a necessity and something he cannot live without. And in respect of Requiem A synthesisers offered a sound palette to the overall performance that was, simply, extraordinary and fulfilling from the very first bar to the last.

Moreover, in Pythagorean thinking, numbers are the fundamental essence of reality, governing the entire universe and its harmonious order - ‘musica universalis’. They held strong beliefs in the immortality and transmigration of the soul (metempsychosis) with the soul needing purification through a strict lifestyle of philosophical study, asceticism and vegetarianism to achieve spiritual liberation. This dual focus on the mathematical structure of the cosmos and the spiritual purification of the individual shaped the Pythagorean way of life and found substance, I feel, with Helbig in his worldly thinking thus shaping his thinking when writing Requiem A.

Helping, though, to shape Helbig’s life as a composer is Neil Tennant. For instance, Helbig arranged the music for The Most Incredible Thing, a ballet created by the Pet Shop Boys and premièred at Sadler’s Wells in March 2011 blending electronic music with choreography by the celebrated Spanish-Venezuelan director, Javier de Frutos. The work was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s final fairytale of 1870 about a competition to find the most incredible deed to win the hand of a princess.

He also arranged the music for the Alan Turing story, A Man from the Future (another Pet Shop Boys initiative) premièred at the 2014 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall performed by the BBC Singers and BBC Concert Orchestra with Juliet Stevenson acting as the Narrator. The piece paid tribute to the life and work of computer scientist, Alan Turing, telling the story of his contribution to computer science and the significant contribution he made in helping to break the Enigma code at Bletchley Park.

Helbig also collaborated with the Pet Shop Boys and the Dresdner Sinfoniker in the ‘High Rise Symphony’ commemorating the 800th anniversary of Dresden in 2004. Comprising a blend of electronic and pop music accompanied by a dramatic lighting scenario punctuated by historical images from surveillance cameras and citizens’ archives, it was performed by the Dresdner Sinfoniker whose members were lodged individually on the balconies of a GDR prefabricated building in Prager Straße.

A main thoroughfare in Dresden leading to the central railway-station, Prager Straße gained historical significance in 1989 as the ‘site’ for the widespread protests which ultimately led to the downfall of the German Democratic Republic. Therefore, on 9 October 1989, the peaceful demonstrations in the city, centred, of course, on Prager Straße, grew massively sending a signal to other important cities in the GDR thus igniting the beginning of the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ ushering in the ending of the Communist regime.

However, if Beethoven was deemed a pioneering and free-thinking soul, the same could be said of the pioneering Dresden composers, Sven Helbig and Torsten Rasch, whose collaboration with the German industrial metal-band, Rammstein, sets them aside from many other German composers. Rammstein’s musical style has been described as ‘brutal’ especially in the groundbreaking, innovative 2002 work, Mein Herz brennt (My Heart burns), a 65-minute song-cycle commissioned by the Dresdner Sinfoniker based on music/lyrics penned by members of the group and arranged by Rasch.

And when Helbig started presenting the series ‘Schöne Töne’ on Radio Eins in 2017, modern and cross-border music was heard regularly on air maybe for the first time in Germany while in 2022 his concept album Skills was released with the cover artwork created in the style of a still-life vanitas painting, a popular genre of Dutch master painting of the 17th century which employed symbolic objects to remind the viewer of the transience of life, the inevitability of death and the futility of worldly pleasures and ambitions. [see Robert's interview with Helbig on Skills]

Boys from the Dresdner Kreuzchor (Photo: Markenfotografie)

All in all, the musical forces for the London première of Requiem A simply couldn’t be better. A star cast, really, with the likes of four well-drilled European boys’ choirs - Dresdner Kreuzchor, Trinity Boys’ Choir. Poznan Boys’ Choir and La Maîtrise de Garçons de Colmar - keeping good company with the London Contemporary Orchestra under Martin Lehmann not forgetting, of course, the strong and authoritative bass-baritone voice of René Pape, a legend in his lifetime

One of the world’s greatest opera singers, René Pape, who contributed so much to the overall performance of a work harbouring dignity, forbearance and forgiveness and a singer who carries both gravitas and emotional fragility in his vocal power, speaks plainly and with unflinching clarity of the past in Requiem A while in the choirs’ harmonies the future looks bright pushing through in a relaxed and gentle fashion. A ‘local’ boy, too, Pape’s early training was with the Dresdner Kreuzchor at the Carl-Maria von Weber University of Music. His first stage appearance - one of the Three Spirits in The Magic Flute.

Therefore, shuffling to my seat in a spirited and carefree manner in the grand and imposing surroundings of Central Hall, Westminster, I became completely lost in thought with my mind switching to another war requiem I attended 63 years ago, namely Britten’s War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral (30 May 1962) receiving its world première.

Meredith Davies conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Festival Chorus while Britten conducted the Melos Chamber Ensemble. The soloists comprised Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Peter Pears and Heather Harper who at short notice replaced Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, barred from travelling to England due to Soviet political intrigue. The male soloists sang the poems penned by Wilfred Owen forming the protestations against warfare while the soprano represented the Latin liturgical text and the boys’ choir evoked the ‘innocence’ of youth.

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Sven Helbig in rehearsal - Central Hall Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

An intriguing work, Helbig’s hour-long Requiem A, mirrors to a certain degree Britten’s 90-minute work inasmuch as Helbig (who also wrote the text) employs the use of boys’ voices to project the ‘innocence’ of youth as did Britten. The boys’ choir sang sections of the Latin Mass for the Dead - specifically ‘In paradisum’ and parts of the ‘Requiem aeternam’ from the Agnus Dei - thereby offering a distant, angelic perspective of the conflict.

The whole work, though, is framed by the Latin Mass for the Dead while also incorporating fragments of the ‘Dresden Requiem’ composed by former Kreuzkantor, Rudolf Mauersberger, who spent 40 years in office. Therefore, Helbig’s Requiem A is a direct continuation of the tradition of commemorating the Dresden victims of 1945 building upon the legacy of Mauersberger’s composition.

The opening bars of Requiem A, therefore, reflects the futility of war and the sadness of loss mixing the Latin Mass for the Dead with a series of poems prophetically written by Helbig focusing on the nature of guilt, loss and rebirth following conflict. And to add and aid the overall context and pleasure of Requiem A, Máni Sigfusson’s video sequences provided food for thought inasmuch as dark cloudy skies and wild ocean scenes were set against war cemeteries and an elongated video sequence of a drowning figure (maybe even an embryo in the womb?) reflecting on the next generation living in peace and harmony following the killing fields of World War II.

I felt that the significance of Bach’s Sanctus in his B minor mass lies in its prominent and symbolic use of the number three reflecting the Trinity, the Sanctus in Britten’s War Requiem highly contrasts with the rest of the work’s bleakness by offering a joyous mood thereby providing a serene hopeful moment within the context of the Latin Mass for the Dead, while the significance of Helbig's Sanctus serves as an introduction to the themes of transition from mourning to life and the potential for new beginnings, set against a backdrop of the composer's reflections on history and contemporary conflicts, all within a framework that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

‘I’ve often heard that after the war the ruins of cities often became playgrounds for children,’ Helbig, states. ‘Children have an incredible ability to adapt to new situations and discover something positive within them. I photographed a girl in mid-jump for the cover artwork of Deutsche Grammophon’s recording of Requiem A placing her against a black background. When I showed the image to my longtime friend, Neil Tennant, he suggested making the girl much smaller setting her against a vast, black backdrop. He said: ‘‘Everything is pitch black but at the core there’s life.’’ I immediately loved the idea. His words even became part of the final chorus translated into Latin: ‘‘Atra, omnia atrata, sed in nucleo vita est!’’ (‘‘Dark, all is dark - life resides at the core!’’ ’

Sven Helbig: Requiem A - Martin Lehmann, Rene Pape - Central Hall Westminster (Photo: Markenfotografie)

I think that this prophetical statement truly sums up Requiem A which left me feeling sad, sorrowful and distracted much in the same way as it did after hearing Britten’s War Requiem in Coventry Cathedral in the Sixties. Both works truly reflect the horrors of war while looking towards a hopeful and peaceful future. And towards the end of Requiem A, Sigfusson’s thoughtful and distinctive video sequence witnesses the dark and cloudy skies of death and destruction giving way to Mother Nature reclaiming the fields of battle thereby ushering in a new dawn for both sides of the bitter and wasteful conflict of World War II.

As an aside, I still cherish Torsten Rasch’s new work Pataphor performed at the Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, in December last year (New Year’s Eve, in fact) by Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Vladimir Jurowski. Lasting a mere 12 minutes, it proved an astonishing and spirited piece of writing while the ending really hit the mark from my standpoint with a flourish of syncopated jazz-related bars with the brass blazing a trail not too dissimilar to that of Stan Kenton and his pulsating, mighty, piercing Wall of Sound. Therefore, if I found Pataphor a brilliant and all-consuming work, the same goes for Sven Helbig’s Requiem A, a most rewarding, spiritual and fulfilling piece structured in nine sections comprising Introit, Kyrie, Meer von Tränen / Sea of Tears (aria), Sana et Vola (movement), Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Aus der Tiefe / From the Depths (aria), An die Weide / To the Pasture (aria) and, finally, Atem (breath). I desire to hear the work again. Amen! 

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