Hallelujah! An Alternative to ‘Messiah’

It has become a tradition for this column, at this time of year, to recommend some new recording of Handel’s “Messiah” to avoid. 1989’s Caveat of the Year goes to the version by London’s excellent Taverner Choir and period-instrument Taverner Players under the direction of their founder, Andrew Parrott. Among the soloists are such stylistic paragons as soprano Emma Kirkby, countertenor James Bowman and bass David Thomas (EMI Angel 49802, two CDs).

It has, however, all been done far more enliveningly and in similar scholarly vein by conductors John Eliot Gardiner (Philips), Ton Koopman (Erato) and Trevor Pinnock (Deutsche Grammophon).

The blame lies with Parrott, who is fatally disinclined to cut loose in those numbers requiring some thunder and/or tension. In “Why do the nations . . . ,” for instance, his plodding, four-square conducting keeps the music earthbound and soloist Thomas unnecessarily in suspense and short of breath.

But there’s more to the seasonal choral explosion than ‘Messiah,’ including two new recordings of the sublimely soothing Faure Requiem, both employing the original small-orchestra scoring, which is really the only way this music should be heard.

The Requiem is lovingly sung by the boys and men of the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, with the English Chamber Orchestra, under Stephen Cleobury (EMI/Angel 49880). The solos are attended to by baritone Olaf Bar, who sings with warm, winning simplicity, and treble Richard Eteson, a King’s chorister, sounding blessedly unlike a pre-pubescent hoot-owl.

The Faure is generously paired with that other most inviting vision of the afterlife, the 1947 Requiem of Maurice Durufle, from the same dedicated forces, with mezzo-soprano Ann Murray.

Faure receives hardly less sensitive, if cavernously recorded, treatment from the Corydon Singers, an immaculately tuned, mixed-voice group directed by Matthew Best with, once more, the English Chamber Orchestra (Hyperion 66292). Mary Seers is the sweet-voiced soprano, Michael George the rather ordinary baritone.

The accompanying material, including the charming “Messe Basse” and the rapturous “Cantique de Jean Racine,” is handsomely presented by Best and his chorus.

Elsewhere, BMG Classics (parent company of RCA records) offers on a pair of CDs (7760) that most gloriously theatrical sacred entertainment of the early Baroque, Claudio Monteverdi’s 1610 “Vespro della Beata Vergine.”

This inspired edition enlists an octet of fine vocal soloists including sopranos Monique Zanetti and Gillian Fisher, whose ravishing flutings in the “Pulchra es” section are reason enough to acquire the set. The production is directed by Frieder Bernius.

For something both offbeat and memorable, try Benjamin Britten’s 1948 “Saint Nicolas,” a marvel of inventive disingenuousness in the same vein as the composer’s “Noye’s Fludde.” The 50-minute cantata deals not with the jolly, red-clad fat man who consorts with reindeer, but the miracles associated with his more-or-less historical progenitor, the fourth-century Bishop of Myra (in Turkey), protector of children.

The present recorded performance (Hyperion 66333), its first in 35 years, features a gaggle of choruses--childrens’ and adult--the English Chamber Orchestra and tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, gloriously bright-voiced in the title role. The conductor is, again, Matthew Best who keeps things both orderly and in motion.

There’s a bonus, too: Britten’s ethereal “Hymn to Saint Cecilia”--the text by W. H. Auden is music in itself--for unaccompanied chorus, exquisitely done by the Corydon Singers.