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

Jennifer Vyvian sings clearly and sweetly, while Monica Sinclair's rich voice adds disturbing undertones to one of Handel's most intriguing and emotionally vibrant compositions- He Was despised. How dare she do this! She should just have declaimed the words with no passion and let us put all the nuances in ourselves! Why oh why do these people inject anything of themselves when the words should do it all?

The chorus! And the orchestra! They are among the worst offenders. They actually sound ecstatic in the Hallelujah Chorus! It's absolutely infuriating that they sound so utterly joyous because Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords! And then there's the Amen Chorus which finishes up the piece. Words fail me... how dare they treat this music so reverentially, as though they're glad to be in heaven. The power and gutsiness of the finale under Beecham lifts my spirits and fires my imagination to new heights. They should just have recited the words and let me do that for myself. Of course, that implies that I am just as good as Beecham's forces. What a heady thought! I am just as good as some of the entire world's greatest musicians... and I cannot read a note of music, nor have I ever sung in The Messiah. But at least, I can THINK it, without ever trying to improve myself.

Oh! Let us not forget the sins of Giorgio Tozzi, whose rich basso-cantante almost overwhelms my senses with its smoothness of sound and richness of characterization. The soul of Man is artfully revealed here, with many of its faults and aspirations... and it is done here by a man who seems to believe what he is singing. Instead of just forcing the sounds out of his mouth, he actually has the sheer voice to succeed with his efforts. How dare he do this! How dare he sound better than the average man! Why, if he sounds better than me, and I want to sing this music as well as he does... (Supposing I was a bass!) why... I might actually have to work at my craft, instead of just lying down like a couch potato and vegetating. (This, of course, is an illusion. Even the most down-home ordinary seeming singing of a blue-grass performer is vastly beyond the untrained and untried voices of the stay-at-home-and-do-nothing-but-I-am-as-good-as-they-are!- want-to-be's! Why, in God's great and Holy Name, would I want to listen to somebody with no talent sing?)

Now we come to Jon Vickers, the tenor who sounds passionate, rich, sincere, reverent, and over the top, with a voice that can sound soothing as easily as it sounds as powerful as Godzilla in a bad mood. Vickers does not have the light, sweet lyric voice usually heard in these solos. Should we not stick with tradition here? Why do Beecham and Vickers have to be so different from all the others? When Vickers sings Thou Shalt Break Them, he really sounds angry. Now why do that? What is there in the words `Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron!' and `Dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel!' that can possibly lead you to believe this soloist is angry or should show anger? I just do not get it. Just sing the words calmly, Jon. Don't be so emotional. Handel's first tenor would not have sung it like you, so why did you do it differently? Maybe the fact that there exists no recordings of that first performer has something to do with it. I do not understand why you would want to approach this creatively, Jon Vickers, with thoughts and ideas of your own and a voice all your own. I just don't understand...

As anyone may have guessed long before this, I love this recording. The arguments given, however, are arguments I have heard many times. There are many people who do seem to think performance artists should not work in a creative, personal, and unique manner. I ask them this question- if nobody did, then how would composers like Handel ever have done this kind of work? How would the singers who first created the parts have performed them? There were no exact precedents, though analogous stylistic precedents abounded. Handel built upon the work that had come before him. (That he was a notorious plagiarist does not invalidate the fact that he was also a very creative man.) Verdi built upon Bellini and Donizetti, to name a few. Sometimes, such building comes as an iconoclastic reaction to set in stone performance practices- witness Boito's efforts, like Mefistofeles and Arnold Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht. Am I against re-creations of original perfomance practices? Not at all. Old as they might be, they would be new performance practices to me. Why not savor the sounds of styles and voices and instruments that are new to me? I love to get a glimpse, however dim, of how my ancestors did things. Sir Thomas Beecham has been accused of leading a bloated Messiah, way over-orchestrated and ponderous. Beecham, in his liner notes, rants and raves against the 3,000 voice choirs and huge orchestras of previous times. I have heard recordings of some of these huge choirs. I agree with those who find them cumbersome and clumsy. Beecham's forces are nothing like that.

I intend to enjoy any performance that touches my heart and soul, whether done with original instruments, or done in the most modern style. It's like having any style of cooking I want.


A Messiah to Treasure   September 24, 1999
27 out of 29 found this review helpful

I LOVE THIS RECORDING! If you are looking for "authentic" you are in the wrong place. But if you are looking for fantastic sound, wonderful singing and a truly uplifting and glorious musical experience you have come to the right place.

Highly, highly recommended.


Handel Would Love It   December 20, 2000
William Shields (Vienna, Va USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Those who believe that G.F. Handel would have frowned on this rendition of his great work know nothing about him. Handel was at heart an operatic composer, turning from Italian grand opera to the oratorio form in mid-career. He loved the grandiose, the sublime, and most of all, the exciting. His operas and oratorios are suffused with powerful arias, ensembles and choruses. Beecham was a musical genius, a scholar of music and of Handel, and knew exactly what he was aiming for this splendid recording. I believe Handel himself would have hated many of the precious "period" performances we hear today--in person and in recording--featuring tiny, white-colored solo voices, clipped tempi and rigid dynamics. I have tossed several CD sets in the basket from sheer boredom. Listen to Beecham and his superb forces, and you will feel what Handel wanted you to feel, which would please him a great deal more than "authenticity."


Beautifully bloated   December 28, 2001
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

It's always good to have a recording or two where the conductor insists on playing the piece exactly as the composer intended so that we have a benchmark. (Even though it's presumptive to guess what a composer would do with a score after it has been sitting around for a couple hundred years.) It's even better when a conductor has the vision and guts to lay an interpretation over the score. Beecham not only interprets, he rewrites. Big lumbering Messiahs seem to have been the norm until the 1960's. Beecham was working from that tradition, but he was as much of a showman as Handel. Remember that he started out by setting up his own orchestra and later morphed it into the Royal Philharmonic. No university musician, this guy. He created a Messiah that is a product of its time. It is pure 1950s Hollywood - the same ilk as wide-screen films and unhistorical biblical spectaculars. He pumped up the orchestra with lots of modern istruments (especially percussion) that Handel didn't have. The forces are very large. Everything is bigger than life. The glitz is intentional and I think there is a place for it along side the traditional Victorian and authentic instrument performances so beloved by MC (musically correct) audiences. You also get the unrivaled voice of Jon Vickers. And, Beecham keeps the Brit hootiness in the performance, particularly in the female soloists. This performance has all of the elevating pomposity that many of us enjoy in Messiah; but it also is fun. What a novel idea in classical music!