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.

I have many versions of Handel's Messiah, new and old and this is one of the best in terms of tonality the matching of the singers voices to the tempo of the orchestra. Sir Thomas' timing throughout is very good although I still find the version by Robert Shaw and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra to be the benchmark recording for my tastes. The HDTT recording is excellent with a black background allowing the singers' voices to come through clearly while the orchestra is well placed across the sound stage rather than clustered in the centre as has been the case with other recordings. One minor problem was an error thrown up by the 21st track which did not decompress properly and could not be played back.