Search - George Frideric Handel, Sir David Willcocks, Academy of St Martin-In-The-Fields :: Handel: Messiah / Willcocks, Choir of King's College, Cambridge

A Quirky But Intriguing Recording

Tom Moran | New York, NY United States | 05/08/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sir David Willcocks's recording of the "Messiah" is a quirky but impressive rendition of Handel's masterpiece. Whether you decide to plunk down the money for it depends on whether or not you're prepared to accept its idiosyncrasies.The recording was made in the early 70s, but feels very contemporary. Tempi are on the fast side, eschewing the solemn rotundity of such "Messiah" stalwarts as Sir Thomas Beecham and Sir Malcolm Sargent, and almost anticipate the HIP (Historically Informed Performance) school of such modern conductors as Nikolaus Harnoncourt and John Eliot Gardiner that would come along a few years later. Every conductor of Handel has to make for himself a lot of decisions about tempi and volume, since Handel's notations in those regards were sketchy at best, but I find myself agreeing with almost all of the choices that Willcocks makes. So what's the problem? Why isn't this an automatic recommendation?The problem with this recording is that, for whatever reason, Sir David decided to eschew female voices entirely, in a work that, at least in my opinion, absolutely requires them. So the contralto parts are sung by what is known as a counter tenor (a male who has trained his voice to sing in the upper registers), and the soprano voices are sung, in unison, by the young boys of the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. It's a decidedly odd way to record the "Messiah," and without any sort of textual justification that I know about, but I have to admit that, as perverse as it sounds, Willcocks more or less pulls it off. The section "There were shepherds abiding in the field..." (one of my favorite parts of the piece) is rendered beautifully ethereal and otherworldly by the childish voices of the choir. This, you think to yourself as you listen, might just be what angels sound like.All the same, I have to admit that this is not the "Messiah" to buy if you're buying your first "Messiah." My first choice would still be Sir Georg Solti's recording, with Sir Colin Davis's 1966 version coming in a very close second (and if money is an issue I'd go with Davis, since his recording costs half as much as Solti's). But if you already own those two recordings, and you're interested in hearing this work in a new and intriguing way, you might want to take a chance on this CD. It's well done almost all the way through (except, oddly enough, for a relatively lackluster "Hallelujah Chorus"), and is worth the money. I don't know how many "Messiahs" you want to own (I have eight and I could use a few more), but this recording, as off-putting as it might sound in parts, does its own strange justice to Handel, so you might want to give it a try."