‘Messiah’ Madness

Every holiday season, someone comes along to ask, “Which recording of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ do you especially recommend?”

Oh, brother.

The choices are mind-boggling.

A Schwann Opus catalog I have on my desk lists about 45 recordings, and new ones come along all the time.

These run the gamut from performances on period (or historical) instruments to modern ones, from small to gigantic choirs, from soloists with modest, vibrato-less voices to opera singers capable of astounding audiences in such huge houses as the Metropolitan in New York.

Most of them have something to offer. You have to know your own taste. And your own interests.

Do you want basically a straight, classical version--whatever that is--or a pop or gospel or contemporary Christian “Messiah”?

You can find them.

What is your opinion of the work? Do you consider it closer to a religious experience, articulating your faith, than an arts/entertainment experience?

Do you see it in a historical, modern or timeless way?

Do you want to attempt to hear the “Messiah” that Handel heard--debate still rages over what that is--or do you want to hear it performed the full-blown way, with huge choruses as 19th century listeners preferred. Maybe you’d prefer something in between.

What cuts would you sanction? Which versions of the arias and choruses would you prefer?

For example: How freely do you think a soloist should ornament or embellish the written line as baroque musicians did? Should the choir members ornament their lines, too? How? How much?

Would you like to hear countertenors or alto soloists in the parts Handel originally wrote for castrati? (These were male singers who underwent surgery to preserve their youthful voice ranges.)

Or would you prefer these parts transposed for today’s sopranos, mezzos or tenors?

Should the choir be made up of mixed (female and male) voices, or all-male ones, with boys singing the treble parts?

Do you just want to listen to the work, or sing along with it?

Why so many questions? It’s because even in its own time, the work was marvelously dynamic. Here’s what most musicologists can agree on.

Handel wrote it in 24 days in the summer of 1741. Originally, it was presented during Lent and only slowly began to acquire its iron-bound association with the Christmas season.

Handel conducted a number of versions of the work, making changes and adjustments along the way depending on which soloists were available.

Conductor Christopher Hogwood, in fact, asserts in his biography of Handel (Thames and Hudson, 1984) that “Messiah” was never performed exactly as it was written in the original 1741 manuscript.

Handel had already made changes when he conducted the premiere in Dublin on April 17, 1742.

And he kept making changes.

One recording--with Nicholas McGegan conducting the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (for Harmonia Mundi)--allows you to program the three CDs to hear any one of the nine variant performances given in Handel’s day.

Will the real “Messiah” please stand up?

Would you be interested in hearing Mozart’s rescoring of the work, which draws more fully on the orchestral resources of his day? Or Thomas Beecham’s, which draws on the resources of a modern orchestra?

Beecham’s, in fact, is one of my favorite two recorded performances. The eminent British conductor, raconteur and bon vivant makes the case in his 1959 liner notes for the RCA Red Seal recording that Handel’s works originally were heard mostly in rooms containing rarely more than 500 people, whereas we hear them in halls of between 2,500 to 3,500 seats.

“To many ears,” Beecham wrote, “the disparity between the size of the hall and the modest sound of [a period] performance appears out of focus. . . . This makes hard going for any audience asked to listen to it with the opulent sound of a latter-day orchestra well in its ears.”

So Sir Thomas--Tommy, as his musicians called him--opted for the opulent modern sound and gave us a wonderful, chocolate heavy, calorie-rich, fat-filled performance, with cymbals and horns and trumpets and drums, which often attains an overwhelming grandeur.

But Charles MacKerras, in his more historically minded performance based on the Basil Lam edition (for Angel) also achieves an inspirational grandeur that I find irresistible.

So which “Messiah” do I recommend? Both. Both are still widely available on CD.

And I’ll be willing to listen to any you want to put up against these two.

The beauty of it all is that no single recording or performance will displace all or maybe even any of the others. Experiment. Listen. Enjoy. And have an inspirational holiday season.

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Chris Pasles can be reached at (714) 966-5602 or by e-mail at chris.pasles@latimes.com.