Description
The Saint Thomas Choir of Men & Boys, with Concert Royal
John Scott, director
Ava Pine, soprano
Kirsten Sollek, alto
Joseph Gaines, tenor
Sumner Thompson, baritone
From Malcomn Bruno’s description found in the CD booklet: ‘Mozart’s Messiah’ is perhaps the greatest example of one composer’s genius revisiting the work of a predecessor, revealing not only the differences of temperament and talent. It provided, above all, the foundation for the symphonic Messiah of the next century and a half…Only in the past forty years has an interest in period instruments and baroque style turned away from the ‘symphonic’ Messiah to performances with smaller choirs of specialist voices and baroque instruments, led from the continuo, closer to what the composer would have known and intended; though ironically it is this same period movement that has led to period performances of ‘Mozart’s Messiah’ in a late eighteenth-century style, with instruments appropriate to that time—bringing us full circle back to the Handel fever of van Swieten’s 1780s.
