Messiah

The performance here of Samson is definitive. It is lively, colourful and highly dramatic. There is no comparison with the tedious performance by the Sixteen on Coro. The performance of the Messiah with limited modern instrumental forces of the English Chamber Orchestra and Chorus with very good soloists doesn't sacrifice grandeur nor does it go to the other extreme of over-blown pomp. It is a very good performamce on modern instruments under the direction of the Baroque music specialist conductor Raymond Leppard.

Handel's 'Messiah' is one of the most sung oratorios in the world and its great choruses and arias can be heard on countless classical collections. From its premiere to the present day, this great sacred work enjoys almost unbroken popularity and has always fascinated audiences and musicians alike. In the chapter "Resurrection of George Frideric Handel" of his book "Decisive Moments in History", Stefan Zweig provides a particularly colourful description of Handel’s "Messiah". Starting from the fresh spirit of the work, he creates a lively story that lets the reader look over his shoulder as he composes the work. In it, he illustrates the timelessness and special position of this great composition in the context of music history.

René Jacobs' performance of Handel's 1750 version of Messiah is remarkable for the fresh insights he brings to such a familiar work. His reading is fleet but never hurried, and movements flow fluidly from each other, virtually without pause. This Messiah is an integrated whole, whose ebbing and flowing move it inexorably toward its climaxes, avoiding the usual sense that the oratorio is merely a string of separate, thematically related numbers. The speed of some sections, and certain unconventional articulations, can at first seem eccentric, but Jacobs' interpretive decisions are always guided by the meaning of the texts, and when the initial surprise fades, seem obviously to be the best choices possible.

This version of Handel's 'Messiah' could quite possibly be feasible today only as a Bernstein reissue. The quest for authenticity has overtaken the performance and recording of early music, and even a conductor recording 'Messiah' without attempting a historically-informed style of performance wouldn't dare introduce the level of revision that Bernstein did for this 1956 recording and the Carnegie Hall performances which preceded it.