Size and scale take Messiah to glorious heights

Handel’s Messiah; New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Tudor Consort, conducted by Nicholas McGegan

Michael Fowler Centre, December 8 Reviewed by John Button

Since the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra z(NZSO) took over the annual Messiah a few years ago, we have had a fascinating mix of size and scale.

Some have used the large Orpheus Choir, others have used much smaller choirs, including the NZSO Messiah Chorale and the Tudor Consort.

Last year, we had the Orpheus under Brett Weymark, and that was a grand affair, well sung if a little lacking in sheer dynamic precision. The previous year, we had Graham Abbott with the Tudor Consort – on a smaller scale and a performance of great precision and finesse.

But the benchmark of recent years was the 2015 performance under Nicholas McGegan with the Mark Dorell-trained Messiah Chorale; brilliantly conducted and featuring the finest choral singing I’ve ever heard in Messiah.

So this year it was McGegan again but this time with the Tudor Consort. What made the biggest difference between the two McGegan performances was the impact of the choral singing.

That wonderful Messiah Chorale had 56 voices, the Tudor Consort some 20 voices less, and in Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre it made a difference. Here, the choral singing was superb but the impact in the more dramatic choruses was less than in 2015.

The Hallelujah Chorus was well done but the earlier performance was spinetingling, and the final dramatic passages were much the same.

The orchestral playing, with an orchestra of the same size was, as usual, wonderfully stylish and immensely polished. I liked the soloists.

I might pick individual soloists over the years I preferred but there was still, overall, a great deal to admire, and had this performance not had that astonishing 2015 experience still lingering in the memory, I would have rated this extremely fine performance, overall, even more highly.