THE first performance in Kidderminster of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem will take place on Saturday.

It will be presented by Kidderminster Choral Society at Kidderminster Town Hall at 7.30pm.

Society members will be joined by soprano, Jennifer Smith, tenor, Hugh Hetherington, baritone, Quentin Hayes together with Marcus Huxley, the organist of Birmingham Cathedral and the Elgar Sinfonia.

Wyre Forest Young Voices, the society's youth choir, will also take part, conducted by Geoffrey Weaver.

The War Requiem was commissioned for the opening of St Michael's Cathedral in Coventry in 1962, which replaced the earlier cathedral destroyed in the Second World War during the Blitz.

Britten dedicated the work to four friends lost in that war and he wrote on the first page: "My subject is War and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity. All a poet can do today is warn."

He set the words of the Requiem Mass alongside the bitter poetry of Wilfred Owen, a solider killed one week before the Armistice in 1918.

Saturday's performance will be part of the Kidderminster Music Festival 2005, which began with the world premiere of Geoff Cummings-Knight's Severn Rides and Severn Lovers in March and has included 12 events, presented by the society and the Wyre Forest Young Voices.

It forms part of the Town Hall Festival 2005, marking the 150th birthday of the town hall.

Tickets are available in advance from Kidderminster Town Hall, Kidderminster Library Council Shop, Bewdley Books, Bob Powell on 01562 60112 or on the door.