Tag: Handel

Robert Harris, The Globe and Mail. Davis’s Messiah will be one of three quite different versions of the perennial favourite presented in Toronto next week, a bit shy of the 20 or so in the New York metropolitan area that the unfortunate junior critic for the New York Times is routinely assigned to review every season, but quite a bouquet nonetheless. The three Messiahs show the extreme versatility and adaptability of this amazing work, which has been pushed and pulled into innumerable, sometimes unrecognizable shapes over its two-and-a-half-century existence, but which manages to escape whole and healthy every time.

Robert Harris of the Globe and Mail reviews the two Messiahs presented in Toronto this year: the Toronto Symphony with the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, and Tafelmusik orchestra and chorus.

Michael Vincent for the Toronto Star. Led by Welsh conductor Grant Llewellyn, the TSO presented an impressive and balanced performance, backed by an on-point orchestra and a full-throated Toronto Mendelssohn Choir. Read the full review online.

Will the 10,000 people who go hear the show at Roy Thomson Hall get the better or worse experience than the 6,800 at Koerner and Massey halls? It’s long been a seesaw battle.

Based on the Toronto Symphony’s first Messiah performance on Tuesday night and Tafelmusik’s on Wednesday, it’s the former that has a slight edge in 2013.

First-time visiting conductor Christopher Warren-Green did a remarkable job of teasing out impressive details from Handel’s music — using less than three-dozen members of the TSO set against the 140 members of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir.

Tuesday’s first performance of the Toronto Symphony’s five-concert run of Handel’s oratorio Messiah at Roy Thomson Hall was that rare beast: a triumph from brisk Overture to rousing Amen.

This interpretation has it all: great soloists, a lean, expressive orchestra, superb choir and a cohesive performance approach from a veteran British conductor making his Toronto Symphony début.

Noel Edison, artistic director of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir says he has no problem with unconventional approaches to The Messiah but, when he leads his singers on their five days with the TSO’s program, he is strictly on the side of tradition.

“I’m too conservative,” Edison admits. Besides, he says, it doesn’t need embellishment. Handel “has so intimately, honestly and elegantly placed the text with the music, that it comes alive.”

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s gift to the city this season is a wonderfully shaped, gorgeously glowing performance of George Frideric Handel’s 1742 oratorio Messiah.

With the help of four excellent soloists and an expertly prepared Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, visiting conductor — and Handel specialist — Nicholas McGegan brought an easy bounce and infectious sense of enthusiasm to this Christmastime favourite at Roy Thomson Hall on Tuesday night.

There was an audible, palpable buzz in the air after Tuesday evening’s first Toronto Symphony Orchestra performance of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. It was like going home after a pop concert.