For aficionados of the authentic early music movement this performance was a dream. Everything was performed at ‘low’ pitch, the trumpets were long, baroque, and superbly played by Pete Mankorious and Sam Pierce, the pace of the movements fast but not rushed, and the pausing very sensitive.  And the forces, just over thirty singers and fourteen instrumentalists including the organ continuo, could well have resembled forces used at the first performance of the work in Dublin in 1742. This is before one mentions the wonderful team of young soloists: soprano Daisy Livesey, counter-tenor Richard Decker, tenor James Micklethwaite, and bass Charlie Baigent. All of them had a wonderful sense of the kind of ornamentation and improvised virtuoso flourishes that Handel, a consummate opera composer who wrote much music for exhibitionist singers, would have encouraged.

Not that Messiah is a work primarily for exhibitionism. It is rather a summary of the entire great Gospel story, beginning with many Old Testament prophecies and ending with a glorious Amen as God, sitting on the throne, and the Lamb who was slain, are glorified. That magnificent Amen began, appropriately, quietly and reverently, before rising to a tremendous and thrilling climax. Throughout the work the choir sang magnificently, clearly (every word could be heard in Holy Trinity’s fine acoustic), and sensitively.

What an evening, and what a wonderful send-off to Max Barley.

Shelagh Godwin