Messiah (Handel) - Recordings

Recordings

Many early recordings of individual choruses and arias from Messiah reflect the performance styles then fashionable—large forces, slow tempi and liberal reorchestration. Typical examples are choruses conducted by Sir Henry Wood, recorded in 1926 for Columbia with the 3,500-strong choir and orchestra of the Crystal Palace Handel Festival, and a contemporary rival disc from HMV featuring the Royal Choral Society under Malcolm Sargent, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall.

The first near-complete recording of the whole work (with the cuts then customary) was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1928. It represented an effort by Beecham to "provide an interpretation which, in his opinion, was nearer the composer's intentions", with smaller forces and faster tempi than had become traditional. His contralto soloist, Muriel Brunskill, later commented, "His tempi, which are now taken for granted, were revolutionary; he entirely revitalised it". Nevertheless, Sargent retained the large scale tradition in his four HMV recordings, the first in 1946 and three more in the 1950s and 1960s, all with the Huddersfield Choral Society and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Beecham's second recording of the work, in 1947, "led the way towards more truly Handelian rhythms and speeds", according to the critic Alan Blyth. In a 1991 study of all 76 complete Messiahs recorded by that date, the writer Teri Noel Towe called this version of Beecham's "one of a handful of truly stellar performances".

In 1954 the first recording based on Handel's original scoring was conducted by Hermann Scherchen for Nixa; it was quickly followed by another version, judged scholarly at the time, under Sir Adrian Boult for Decca. By the standards of 21st-century performance, however, Scherchen's and Boult's tempi were still slow, and there was no attempt at vocal ornamentation by the soloists. In 1966 and 1967 two new recordings were regarded as great advances in scholarship and performance practice, conducted respectively by Colin Davis for Philips and Charles Mackerras for HMV. They inaugurated a new tradition of brisk, small scale performances, with vocal embellishments by the solo singers. Among the last notable recordings of older-style performances were Beecham's final, extravagantly reorchestrated version made for RCA in 1959; one conducted by Karl Richter for DG in 1973, though it used authentic orchestration; and a third based on Prout's 1902 edition of the score, with a 325-voice choir and 90-piece orchestra conducted by Sir David Willcocks in 1995.

By the end of the 1970s the quest for authenticity had extended to the use of period instruments and historically correct styles of playing them. The first of such versions were conducted by the early music specialists Christopher Hogwood (1979) and John Eliot Gardiner (1982). The use of period instruments quickly became the norm on record, although conductors such as Sir Georg Solti (1985) and Sir Neville Marriner (1993) continued to favour modern instruments. Gramophone magazine and The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music highlighted two versions, conducted respectively by Trevor Pinnock (1988) and Richard Hickox (1992). The latter employs a chorus of 24 singers and an orchestra of 31 players; Handel is known to have used a chorus of 19 and an orchestra of 37. Performances on an even smaller scale have followed.

Several reconstructions of early performances have been recorded: the 1742 Dublin version by Jean-Claude Malgoire in 1980 and several recordings of the 1754 Foundling Hospital version, including those under Hogwood (1979), Andrew Parrott (1989), and Paul McCreesh. Unorthodox adaptations have included a late 1950s recording conducted by Leonard Bernstein of his own edition which regrouped and reordered the numbers into a "Christmas section" and an "Easter section". In 1973 David Willcocks conducted a set for HMV in which all the soprano arias were sung in unison by the boys of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and in 1974, for DG, Mackerras conducted a set of Mozart's reorchestrated version, sung in German.