Appreciation by Neil Crutchley

How do you discuss and illustrate the infinite interpretative possibilities of such a universally popular work as Handel’s great oratorio Messiah in the space of an hour and a half?

You may well think this impossible, but you’d be wrong, as our Chairman proved in a tour-de-force of a presentation which combined knowledge, scholarship, erudition, wit and enthusiasm. A former head chorister at Leicester Cathedral, David is a fine composer and an inspiring conductor and it’s these qualities along with many others that made his talk so compelling. Messiah is a work that he’s known since boyhood and his intimate knowledge of the score from the point of view of singer, conductor and composer made him the ideal person to attempt such a daunting task.

More than ninety short excerpts from conductors such as Trevor Pinnock, Christopher Hogwood, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, John Eliot Gardiner and Harry Christophers were compared with more unorthodox accounts, which ranged from the decidedly flamboyant (Beecham), the overtly operatic (Bonynge), the re-orchestrated (Goosens and Mozart) and the “jazzed up” (Young Messiah and A Soul Celebration). This was a fascinating and worthwhile exercise. In some cases seven recorded versions of the same few bars of music were heard in quick succession. This resulted in a kaleidoscope of different performing styles accompanied by witty comments from our speaker.

It would be impossible to in the space available to pick out more than a couple of the most remarkable performances and these are bound to be personal, but listening again to parts of the spectacularly colourful and some would say outrageous orchestration by Eugene Goosens complete with blazing brass, cymbals and even a triangle, would be one. Especially when interpreted with swashbuckling panache in 1959 by Sir Thomas Beecham, whose energetic command of his Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and choir was astounding for an eighty-year-old.

Another would be the curiously operatic version by Richard Bonynge, husband of the renowned soprano Joan Sutherland, who appears on the recording along with the contralto Huguette Tourangeau, whose vocal range was quite extraordinary and clearly fascinated the speaker. The performance itself was full of operatic quirks such as the insertion of vocal and instrumental trills at every opportunity.

The recordings David chose to compare represented a fraction of those available, but I’m sure, given his knowledge of the work, he could do the same with another dozen – and so on!