Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

If you think music is about "scholarship" rather than emotion, if you believe a performance is a worship service deifying the composer, if you believe that music is performed for the sake of professors and people who have been dead for two centuries, then you will HATE this recording. But if you believe that music is an act of love and excitement, performed for the sake of those doing the performing and the listening, then this performance is the standard by which all performances of "Messiah" should be judged. Beecham was unapologetic in his determination to mold the piece into an emotional experience for all concerned, regardless of the demands of scholarship and authenticity. The singing, playing and conducting are all brilliant. The recording, although 40 years old, is vivid and entirely listenable. Make no mistake: in the hands of Beecham, this is no baroque piece. It is aggressively romantic, powerful, unrestrained, soaring, emotional, even delirious. Sometimes I think it gets a bit out of hand - the Hallelujah Chorus is too fast even for the taste of a romantic rock 'n roller like me. But if you are tired of performances which strip away all the feeling (and are then described as "refreshing" by the dried-up critics), then this is the record for you. Beecham! Thou should'st be living at this hour.....

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.

Rich, powerful, passionate voices, capable of thunderous power and calm tenderness! What was Beecham thinking about? How dare he treat this music as though it was about Jesus' coming, His life here on Earth, and His death and resurrection? I can hardly imagine why the old conductor would possibly have wanted to conduct this any differently from what Handel heard in that historic first performance. Beecham should be tarred and feathered for daring to have his own thoughts concerning The Messiah... and for daring to hire Eugene Goosens to orchestrate it. Didn't he know that The Messiah is a dusty old museum piece, on display for our silent reverence, and should not be thought of as a living composition, capable of taking its audiences to emotional heights that are almost unbearable in their power and beauty?

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.

While looking for a different rendition of a revered standard in both the secular and sacred repertoires, I questioned a well-listened acquaintance about finding a stellar but out-of-the-normal-realms recording of Handel's Messiah. He thought for only a moment before naming this recording. Good quality, nicely remastered, good pressing, great soloists, and a very, VERY different rendition of the music.

As mentioned in the Amazon review, baroque purists are going to raise both eyebrows at this piece, but if you give it some space, it'll grow on even those baroque-o-philes. This lavishly romantic treatment of the score gives one a very different concept. In many baroque-sensitive recordings, the emphases are on speed and virtuosity. In this recording, tempi are markedly slower, less phrenetic, less frenzied than they at times appear in more virtuosic renditions. Here, the words are pondered and mulled a bit. Not a bad thing! This is not a lite recording. With full turn of the century orchestation by Goossens (not by Beecham as mentioned in the "house" review), there are moments of hugeness as an entire low brass choir and a multitude of contrabasses pour out their hearts. You will doubtless be startled by cymbals and bass drum in the Hallelujah Chorus. It helped this listener re-think the music in light of the heft of the words. Add to that some none-too-subtle nuance, just to make sure that you understand that this is a Romantic orchestration, and you get a pretty good preparation for a wonderful, albeit unexpected, audio experience.

A Highly recommended album.

We live in an era when purity of intent and respect for composers' works is at an all time high. Not only are we blessed with superb 'authentic' performances on period instruments and with small choruses and countertenors and state of the art bel canto singers for Handel's evergreen "Messiah", there are many superlative recordings that are as polished as any one work on current recordings. Supposedly we are hearing Messiah the way Handel envisioned it. Perhaps so, but who is to say that had Handel the resources available today he wouldn't have jumped for joy at the drama of the old British Choral Societies version that Sir Thomas Beecham conducts on this anything but dusty recording from many years ago. The 'Old School' had its good points.

Beecham goes all out with an orchestration, while attributed to Sir Eugene Goosens is also probably some of Beecham's own inimitable tinkering, that adds instruments not only in numbers but also in color and depth of sound. Winds double strings, percussion includes the full battery instead of just tympani, the big cello and viola sound stand equally with the big violin sound, etc. The chorus is huge, and while this allows the big dramatic moments to be intense, the fine diction Beecham demanded remains solidly intact.

The soloists are in an operatic class of their own. Jennifer Vyvyan and Monica Sinclair were major singers when this recording was made and their singing is big and well ornamented. Jon Vickers and Giorgio Tozzi bring Verdi into the room and he is a welcome visitor to Beecham's vision of this work.

For this listener, who prefers the 'correct, authentic' performance, this recording and others even older that celebrate the BIG Messiah are a delight. And that just proves that performance standards, no matter the interpretation of the conductor, are paramount: Beecham gives a solid, convincing interpretation to the operatic Messiah. It is lush, and huge, and absolutely wonderful to hear again! Grady Harp, December 06

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."

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!

Glory into God in the highest, congratulations to Sir Thomas Beecham for his great achievement and joy to all Messiah's lovers in this Land.

This recording is really astonishing. One could have preference for any one among the Messiah's recordings, but this one is a must for those who really love the greatest music masterpiece ever.

Besides everything that could be said about this rendition, the quality of the recording itself is outstanding, especially if one realizes that it was recorded in the year of 1959. Starting from the Overture to the Amen, everything chills you up in this extraordinary performance.

It does not matter if you are a beginner or somebody that has been listen to the Messiah since you were a child, this is the one that could not be missing in your collection. If you are a beginner and you start with this recording you will always love the Messiah. By saying that I am not misjudging the others Messiah's recordings.

Actually, there is a multitude of excellent Messiah's recordings out there. In my opinion it is really a very hard task to rank them for the simple reason that each one has its own characteristic and you could be happy with so many of them. Amongst those that I own I could mention a few that I consider really good: ANDREW DAVIS with The Toronto Symphony & Toronto Mendelssohn Choir; WILLIAM CHRISTIE with Les Arts Florissants; ROBERT SHAW with The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chamber Chorus; TREVOR PINNOCK with The English Concert & Choir; OWEN BURDICK with The Trinity Choir and Orchestra. Beside others, these are all great Messiah's recordings and you can find them right here, a step from you, not even that, just a click at the Amazon.com. So, don't be scared, go ahead and have fun.

This is a refreshing change from the plethora of recordings using "authentic instruments" that have inundated the market in the late eighties and ninties. There's nothing quite like the red-blooded rendition of Jon Vickers in "Every valley" to get the spirits up and the "Hallejah" and "Worthy is the lamb" choruses are comletely overwhelming. Excellent recording for its period too.

This version is the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who loves The Messiah. I was surprised by the orchestration (as has been pointed out, it is not the "authenthic" Baroque version), but the chorus and especially the soloists are unbelievably good. Wonderfully done.