No musical tribute has a bigger resonance on Remembrance Sunday than Britten’s War Requiem. Although the work was composed in commemoration of those who died in the second world war, it uses the first world war poems of Wilfred Owen and the Latin text of the Requiem Mass, the latter widening its scope across the centuries.

On arrival at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, it was somewhat unnerving to find a warning posted outside the door that smoke effects would be used during the evening. Were Owen’s poetic visions of war in the trenches to be enacted in front of us? Or was the performance expected to create such heat that the hall might catch fire?