Prom 65
Messiah
George Frideric Handel, arranged by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Academy of St Martins in the Fields
Phiharmonia Chorus, Bath Minerva Choir, The Fourth Choir, Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, London Youth Chamber Choir, Voices of the River’s Edge.
Conductor: John Butt
Royal Albert Hall
Perhaps the flexibility of Messiah partly accounts for its popularity for nearly three centuries . . . and counting. You can do it with a dozen singers and a one-to-a-part orchestra or just a keyboard. Or you can assemble a chorus of hundreds with a sizeable orchestra and/or organ and it still works perfectly. This performance was a large scale one, with six choirs raising the Albert Hall’s very noble roof, but under John Butt’s baton, it, still managed to feel light and even, at times, intimate.
In many ways it was a glorious performance. The beauty of Benjamin Hulett’s smiling, opening Comfort Ye with its immaculately controlled crescendos and diminuendos on the long notes moved me to tears. Helen Charlston’s He Was Despised was sung with a powerful blend of passion and sensitivity and her decorated recap was exquisite (lovely bassoon work in the accompaniment too). Nardus Williams, perhaps a tad understated at times, really rose to the warm joy of I Know that My Redeemer Liveth and Ashley Riches’s powerful bass baritone singing of But Who May Abide carried all the terror that it should.
The choir sound was excellent, some numbers being sung by the main choir standing behind the orchestra with the rest of the singers in the choir seats joining them at terrific moments such as the exciting subito forte in For unto Us a Child is born when the volume doubled and timpanist came in with his hard sticks. This is a fine achievement in more than one way. I once sang Beethoven 9 (community effort with Kent County Youth Orchestra) in Royal Albert Hall and I know that from the very top row of the choir you feel as if you’re on a different planet from the conductor with a huge time lag between you. So hats off to all concerned with the singing here because apart from a bit of muddiness in Let Us Break their Bonds asunder, which was taken too fast for the acoustic, it sounded rich, clear and vibrant.
Of course there are some great moments in Mozart’s arrangement of Handel’s masterpiece – that bassoon and then the flute in He Was Despised, for example and the solo cello punctuating some of the recitative. I do wish though – not for the first time – that he had allowed us a trumpet in The Trumpet Shall Sound. I know valved horns were the new kid on the orchestral block. They were novel and Mozart loved exploiting them. But rescoring this number for a pair of horns saps all the drama out of it.
This Messiah was the climax of the BBC Proms Choral Day and it was billed as offering scope for the audience to join in. As the organ kicked in and the orchestra struck up the introduction to Hallelujah John Butt turned round and signalled that the audience should stand which I suppose at least gets round the usual shall I /shan’t I distraction. It was a moment of grand musical solidarity and might have been all right had I not been next to a loudly enthusiastic, young Florence Foster Jenkins. It’s actually quite a feat to bellow your way through the whole of Allelujah without hitting a single right note and it prevented me from hearing anything else in the hall. Then, at the very end, we were invited to join in the final Amen which was a mess and completely negated the soprano top A, nine bars before the end which is arguably the most sublime moment in the whole piece. On balance I much prefer my Messiah without audience participation although it was a worthy attempt at “inclusiveness”.
