I recall the elegant luxury built into the old golden age of stereo vinyl issue of Beecham's Messiah. The velvety box and other upscale acountrements have long faded; but this refurbishment of the recording in High Resolution audio is long welcome. Firstly this is hardly any sort of traditionalistic or historically informed performance. Sir Malcolm Sargent was said to have been asked by Beecham to re-orchestrate Handel's score, and he did. Others have taken on such tasks, most notably Mozart ... but Sargent's way with the post-Romantic Era orchestra of his time holds up remarkably well. A lot has to be credited to Beecham's special brand of musical vitality, already known from several other of the conductor's discography that has also held up through decades of sea changes in recording technology and playback. Soloists are singing on a fine vocal edge between oratorio and opera: Vivyan Sinclair soprano, Alfreda Hodgson alto, an unsurpassable Jon Vickers tenor, and Tito Gobbi baritone-bass in his prime. The Beecham Choral Society is a large chorus; their singing is accurate, rhythmically spot on, and sweeps away HIP considerations despite the latest recording trends. Of all the golden age stereo recordings of Messiah, this surely ends up being one of the most musically persuasive. My only complaint is that some of the numbers from the complete score - valiantly included at Beecham's behest in an era when cuts were often the norm for concert performances as well as recordings - get put into an appendix. Just to enjoy it all even more, I confess I copied the appendix music into its original sequence in Handel's marvelous full score. The DSD 128 sound is splendid. You'd never know that this was done in the 1960's .... nearly sixty years ago. Yes I'm not giving up on my other Messiah recordings on the overflowing favorite shelves; nevertheless it is a deep musical pleasure to welcome this Soria Series treasure back, luxuriating in high resolution remastering. Bravos ... all 'round !!!

I am a fan of historically informed period performances. For me, they have opened up a whole new perspective on baroque and classical music. I already have three HIPP recordings of Messiah, those conducted by Pinnock, Hogwood and Butt, as well Mizart's orchestration conducted by Mackerras. So I was a bit sceptical about this Goossens/Beecham effort. I shouldn't have been. The Mozart version sets a very honourable precedent for this sort of undertaking. It is futile to argue that this is the way Handel would have written if he had had access to a 20th century orchestra. It has to succeed on its own terms and, by and large, it does. There are some jarring moments initially with the fuller harmonies and the greatly expanded percussion but I quickly adjusted to them. The one-time I felt it went too far was the Hallelujah chorus, but that aside, this is a full-blown superb performance. The singing of the soloists is magnificent, especially Jon Vickers, of whom I long been a fan. The chorus is a great match for the soloists. The whole performance is brilliantly conducted by Beecham with plenty of energy and ensures what could easily be a travesty is a triumph.

Love it or hate it, the Beecham recording is quite unique: spectacular, dramatic yet poetic at times, involving and colorful. Beecham is a passionate champion of Handel's masterpiece and unafraid of imposing his own stamp and originality whlie respecting the spirit of the work. Purists beware. The choral and vocal contributions are distinguished, especially the vibrant, powerful, moving even heroic Jon Vickers,perhaps the grandest tenor to have recorded this part.

This Messiah is not a normal performance. Beecham asked a friend composer, Goossens, to arrange "If Handel would have made it alive," this arrangement. This performance, unlike a regular Messiah, is performed loudly by a full orchestra, including brass instruments and percussion instruments, but it is a very well arranged arrangement with no sense of incongruity. The orchestra, choir and soloist are great. The sound quality has been significantly improved compared to CDs and records released in the past.

Handel just doesn't sound right on modern instruments. Music essentially vital, vibrant and eternally new becomes encased in a layer of nostalgic warmth. It can be lovely, but it is always somewhat enervated. Respighi's ancient airs and dances are lovely, but don't sound like Renaissance lute music anymore. Beecham would not have been in a position to know this, and may not have cared, but he instinctively solved the problem in the opposite direction. As a notorious war criminal once said, "if you have a problem, make it bigger." Beecham made it a. lot. bigger. by giving us a radically re-orchestrated and upscaled Messiah that abandons the Baroque altogether and joins the aesthetic universe of Carmina Burana and Schoenberg's Gurrelieder. It is wrong, epically, cosmically wrong, but it doesn't matter. Beecham once quipped that the English don't like music very much, but they do like noise it makes. No Messiah has ever made as much noise as Beecham's, and hopefully no other will ever do so again.