Choir of Westminster Abbey, Academy of Ancient Music; Andrew Nethsingha, conductor; Anna Dennis, soprano; Tristram Cooke, countertenor; Simon Wall, tenor; Jonathan Brown, bass.
Going to this event was a matter of happenstance. I had hoped to be going to the L’Elisir D’Amore production at ENO but had wrongly written down the date of the show as 26/11 in my diary. In fact, it was happening on 27th when I had already booked another interesting concert – and hotel and transport were fixed for those two days. Of the options – this and Tosca at ROHCG, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and a couple of other events – The Messiah seemed to be the most attractive, albeit in a restricted-view seat, particularly as I had had to miss the Halle Messiah I’d booked for last year, and it is ages since I heard it live (I think the last time I heard the whole piece was probably in the Anglican Cathedral in Cairo c.1985, but there was a splendid performance of extracts from a collection of church choirs in Accra, Ghana, all singing from memory and sounding glorious, particularly the basses, about 20 years ago) .
The performance obviously was not heard in the most conducive of circumstances due to the last minute scramble – the best ticket I could get was on the left hand side of the nave, blocked by a pillar from seeing about 90% of the performers, and my hearing to some extent occluded by the pillar and of course in any case by the echo-y church acoustics playing havoc with the sound – and all that needs to be understood in comments following.
Several things occurred to me listening to the work in full:
• Its only near competitor in Handel’s works for the number of ‘hit’ tunes and memorable moments is Julius Caesar – almost every aria, every chorus, is a winner. It is really a glorious work to hear and must be a joy to sing
• It’s also quite an odd work, which, despite the title, is nothing like a narrative of Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection. The different selected Biblical passages, apart from some of the Christmas story in Part 1 and bits of Revelations towards the end , are not notably related to each other and read like a series of texts for meditations and reflection on incarnation, suffering, resurrection and judgement rather than a story as such.
The meditative nature of the text means that there is something to be said for the grand old Sargent-like ‘big’ Messiah performance style, moving at a stately pace and giving some more pace for musing, if not contemplation. This performance however was coming from a very different perspective – historically informed instruments and sounds, swift tempi, punchy rhythms. The snappy tooth-aching gut strings produced real energy in the choruses and gave some wonderful lightness to the music at points – the strings came through clearly shining in the shepherds scene, for instance, not swamped by voices – but performance as a whole did feel a bit rushed, with little time to think about the meaning of some of the chorus and recitative texts, .
All the singers apart from the soprano were members of the Abbey Choir – not a huge number of people. and of course this also meant that there was a preponderance of boys and no women. Using the Abbey Choir did seem to me to make the sound unbalanced at times – though there were only 8 tenors and basses and 4 adult altos, and about 25 boy trebles, the sound was adult-male heavy. Despite their number, the boys didn’t really have the cutting sound that adult female sopranos would have had, and the adult male voices, despite their numbers, tended to predominate in the choruses.
Nevertheless, despite the above quibbles, there were many splendid moments. For me the highlights were:
• ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ – impressive soprano singing
• Another soprano aria – “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion”
• Counter-tenor aria – ‘He was despised and rejected’
• Bass aria – ‘Why do the nations’
• And of course the big choruses, complete with baroque drums and natural trumpets – ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Worthy is the Lamb/Amen’
….all of course experienced in the wonderful atmosphere of the Abbey.
I really must go to choral evensong at the Abbey tomorrow
John's musical journey 