วันเสาร์ที่ 10 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2552

Handel - Messiah / Vyvyan · Sinclair · Vickers · Tozzi · Royal PO · Beecham

Handel - Messiah / Vyvyan Sinclair Vickers Tozzi Royal PO Beecham

Amazon.com essential recording


Sir Thomas Beechams Messiah has become notorious among baroque purists (like this writer) for embodying the worst excesses of pre-1960 Handel performance: ponderous tempos, stentorian opera singers, huge lumbering choruses and orchestras, crashing cymbals, clanging triangles.... Well, well need a new straw man: this performance is WONDERFUL. Jon Vickers and Giorgio Tozzi negotiate Handels writing surprisingly well Jennifer Vyvyan takes to it naturally. The chorus and orchestra (yes, including trombones, tuba, triangle, and cymbals) may obscure the part-writing, but they fill the music with power, grandeur, and faith. If Mozart could re-orchestrate Messiah, why not Beecham? This may not be Handels Messiah as such, it may even be a period piece itself--but its magnificent. --Matthew Westphal
Rate Points :4.0
Binding :Audio CD
Label :RCA
Manufacturer :RCA
MPN :61266
ProductGroup :Music
Studio :RCA
Publisher :RCA
UPC :090266126620
EAN :0090266126620
Price :$18.97USD
Lowest Price :$12.85USD
Customer ReviewsThe Geese are Getting Fat Again...
Rating Point :1 Helpful Point :5
... and there will be a winter after the Presidential election in America, whoever wins, with the usual need to play the Messiah when Uncle Harald and Aunt Lily come to visit, if only to preclude conversation, so...

Lets do a little round-robin review of Messiah performances, which will be much more fun than exchanging barbs and diatribes. In the comment thread to follow, tell me your current favorite and least favorite Messiah recordings, and/or tell me what you think makes a good performance of this so over-performed masterpiece.

I chose this ancient performance, which I have on vinyl, as a starting place because its so very awful that I cant imagine not launching the discussion from a consensus.
Whats so bad about it?
The orchestra is badly out of tune, at least when i can discern tuning amidst all the blare and ruckus.
The chorus is precisely what George Orwell meant when he spoke of Handels "big bow-wow." Its thick in timbre and unwieldy in phrasing, and it just plain doesnt make an appealing noise.
The soloists cant keep up with the baroque sixteenth notes, and each of them has her/his own noxious vibrato.
The tempi are absurdly slow and turgid.
The recording quality makes the music sound like an old Studebaker car radio. even on good speakers.

I have six other performances in my collection, some old and some new. By conductor: Solti, Hogwood, Pinnock, McCreesh, Harnoncourt, and Christie. Make a really good case for any other and Ill order it in time for Uncle Harald.
Awesome music!
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :1
This is music from the angels! Perfect, perfect, perfect is all I can say - you wont be disappointed with this CD. Great to listen to all year, but especially at Christmas.
All Wrong - And WONDERFUL!
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :0
I never had much interest in Messiah but I had long known about this recording. A few years ago I heard a CBC radio feature on Jon Vickers where they played Every Valley. It was one of those rare "What is THAT?" moments that I have had all to rarely in years of playing and listening to music. Finally I bought the recording and listen to it around Christmas every year, and love it more every time.

While I appreciate the scholarly concepts behind period performance, I often find it boring in practice. Small orchestra, small choir? Whats the point? Give me big, bold and raucous. If you want authentic, hire a bunch of musicians who cant play in tune and hire an unheated hall. Ill take Beecham, the reorchestration, the opera singers and all the inauthenticity one can muster if it produces music-making like this. Strongly recommended.
Ornamentated Messiah
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :2
If you want a Messiah as big as the planet, but with style, get this famous Beecham version done with romantic ornamentations. Its awesome!
Authenticists, stay away!,
Rating Point :4 Helpful Point :2
While I am not by any means an original instrument/performance purist, even I find myself balking at the leisurely swagger of so many of the tempi adopted here (although Sir Thomas scampers through "For we, like sheep" as if he cannot wait to be rid of the embarrassment of it) and the rather disconcerting woodwind twiddles, flutey noodlings, lush horns and timpani bashings with which the Goossens orchestration (or was it more the work of Beecham himself?) graces us - yet I will readily admit that I really enjoy this rendering of Handels inexhaustible masterpiece, done con amore as only Beecham could do it. The slow tempi certainly allow a clear articulation and a grandeur of utterance which are not unbecoming to such theologically elevated music.

The soloists are very fine, especially the men Vickers obviously has a heroic tenor very different from the rather hooty, throaty tenorino so often wheeled out these days for this music (I mention no British tenors whose weedy sound is so inexplicably prized...) and he articulates the recitative with real depth of feeling. Tozzi, likewise, is a tower of strength - you can just luxuriate in the smooth treacle of that bass. The women are stalwarts of that era fine artists both.

Its not the only "Messiah" you will want to hear there is room for a less reverential, more animated and generally more lightly sprung interpretation but in many ways it brings you closer to the emotional heart of this music than many an underpowered, chilly and spare "original instruments" version. (Actually, Beechams orchestra and choir are not that big compared with the Victorian blockbuster style which preceded it its just the ponderous tempi and extra orchestration which create an impression of additional weight.)

So buy this - its very reasonably priced and beautifully recorded for its 1959 provenance - and enjoy it for what it is: Beechams tribute to a master composer.
เขียนโดย ที่

ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:

แสดงความคิดเห็น

สมัครสมาชิก: ส่งความคิดเห็น (Atom)