ProduktrezensionenHandel: Acis & Galatea / Messiah by Handel / Sutherland / London Sym Orch / Boult (CD, 2011)

Two Baroque-era Classics Resurrected for CD -- At a Bargain Price

This is a surprisingly invigorating pair of performances, both featuring Sir Adrian Boult conducting the music of Handel utilizing orchestral forces of very different dimensions. The Messiah, from 1961, is a stereo recreation of the monaural performance that Boult conducted early in the previous decade -- this is an "old-school," Victorian-style and proportioned interpretation of the score, with a large orchestra and chorus, and big, spacious sound. And though it is large-scale, it is never ponderous -- Boult keeps the piece moving and the experience is downright bracing, even if it isn't as obviously propulsive as the more recent, quicker-tempo interpretations that have become standard.

But the real treat in this set is the Acis & Galatea recorded a year earlier by Boult conducting Philomusica of London, a chamber orchestra that left behind some exceptional recordings of Baroque-era music. Joan Sutherland (who also illuminates the Messiah) and Peter Pears are the principals in this performance, and the light textures and fluid pacing, coupled with state-of-the-art sound for its time, makes the opera worth the price of admission by itself. Vollständige Rezension lesen...

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