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Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
"We shall not all sleep..." Sadly, I did. As so often with recordings raved about by the UK critical establishment, I found this a big let-down. This performance is no doubt very scholarly and accurate, but to me it's precious, petite and ultimately soporific. The booklet says they wanted to create the freshness and surprise of a premiere; for me they achieved the opposite. If you REALLY want a Messiah with absolutely superb diction, try out Radu and the Ama Deus Ensemble from American Amazon.
Outstanding Handel There are many versions of 'Messiah' available, ranging from those with choirs in the hundreds(Sargent. Beecham, et al)to those with much smaller choirs and with period instruments (Pinnock and others). But even if you have these, the is a version in the 'must have' category. There are only 13 choir members and the soloists 'double' from the choir. This would be an approach quite familiar to Handel; many oratorios were performed thus.In this version every crotchet is absolutely accurate; reading against the... more info
Top of the pile! Having listened to many of the various versions of Messiah, and previously having had The English Concert/Pinnock (Archiv) as my top choice, this new release from the Dunedin Consort has now surpassed that. Sure, it's sometimes tricky to compare recordings of different performing versions of the Messiah (of which there are many) but this recording of the 1742 Dublin version, whilst it might have been originally adapted by Handel to cater for soloists of perhaps a lesser quality than he could lay his hands... more info
Rejoice I just thought I'd point out that this performance uses the 6-8 version of Rejoice. I've looked at that in the score but I've never heard it performed. I found it utterly charming. Overall, having performed Messiah more times than I care to count, this performance is an enjoyable, new look at the work. At least, new to me.
