Georg Friedrich Händel: Messiah - Early Version 1741

Georg Friedrich Händel: Messiah - Early Version 1741

ROP622324 (Rondeau Production, CD, 2 discs)

DDD
FIRST RELEASE (20 October 2023)

Playing time: 75'39"/65'44" - TT 141'23"
Tracks: 24 + 27
Booklet pages: 40
℗ 2023 Rondeau Production GmbH
© 2023 Rondeau Production GmbH
Main country of recording: Germany
Reviewer: Gerald Fenech
Review of Georg Friedrich Händel: Messiah - Early Version 1741 published on 25 December 2023

Viola Blache, soprano
Stefanie Schaefer, alto
Fabian Kelly, tenor
Julian Dominique Clement, bass
Gutenberg-Kammerchor
Neumeyer Consort
Felix Koch, conductor

George Frideric Handel, edited by Malcolm Bruno and Caroline Ritchie:

Messiah - early version 1741

CD1

Part the first

Part the second

CD2

Part the second (continued)

Part the third

George Frideric Handel's Messiah was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and subsequently reworked several times. However, an earlier version from 1741 exists, based on the composer's two autograph scores. The musicologist Malcolm Bruno has reconstructed this original version and published it with Breitkopf & Härtel. In this version, an independent woodwind section consisting of two oboes and bassoons can be heard, and there are also new discoveries to be made in the arias. Bruno is enthusiastic about the first recording of the 'Ur-Messiah' and hopes 'that the listener has the experience of hearing the Messiah as if for a first time, as if the ink of Handel's manuscript were still wet'.

Recorded 24-26 April 2021 and 20-24 May 2022 at Sängerhalle Saulheim, Germany.