SITE RATING:
7/10
SITE
REVIEW:
In my search for recordings of
Messiah
that I've not heard,
occasionally I'll stumble by sheer chance upon
a foreign release, like
this 1993 German choral highlights (Mozart
arr.), featuring no less
than three combined choirs under the direction
of Klaus Fischbach.
Fischbach is still working with the
choir that features his name
as of this writing, and based upon this
sample, the director is able to
form a clean, balanced sound. I'm not
sure how large the combined
forces are for this recording, but they manage
to blend their voices
admirably, helped by the thick natural
acoustic of the space they're
in. Fischbach directs the choruses in a
deliberate, square manner, with
tempos that are similarly deliberate; they're
much slower than I'm
accustomed to hearing in a recording from this
era, and the squareness
of the tempos make me feel as if the choir is
s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g o-u-t
e-a-c-h m-e-l-i-s-m-a, or speaking to a child
very slowly and
carefully. It's a strange aural
sensation, almost as if I'm being
sung "down" to. Regardless, the pure
tone and unity of the choir,
the matched playing of the orchestra, and the
slow, but steady pulse of
the direction I found generally disarming.
Being a live
recording, there is a little audience noise
present, but it's very
clean-sounding overall, and if you don't mind
the slow, stately tempos
throughout, this is a choral performance worth
seeking out.
|
