[12/23/2011] Preview: If it's Christmas, it's time for "Messiah" and "The Childhood of Christ" (continued)

Nicolai Gedda and Otto Klemperer

ONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUR TWO WORKS . . .

. . . is that Messiah, like any well-behaved baroque oratorio, has an overture, or "symphony," and so we're going to hear the it from the same recording as our "Comfort ye" and "Every valley," conducted in a now-frowned-upon old-fashioned style -- and yet with conviction and some eloquence -- by Otto Klemperer. By contrast, the lone number we're hearing from L'Enfance du Christ is the actual, self-contained prologue, which leads directly into Part I, "Herod's Dream."


HANDEL: Messiah

No. 1. Symphony
[audio link]
No. 2. Accompagnato, tenor, "Comfort ye, my people"
No. 3, Air, tenor, "Every valley shall be exalted"

Accompagnato
Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
The voice that crieth in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

-- Isaiah XL:1-3

Air
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

-- Isaiah XL:4

[audio link]
Nicolai Gedda, tenor (in Nos. 2-3); Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965


BERLIOZ: L'Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ), Op. 25: Opening Narration

In the manger at this time Jesus had just been born,
but no wonder had yet made him known.
And already the powerful were trembling;
already the weak were hoping.
Everyone was waiting.

Now learn, Christians, what a monstrous crime
was suggested to the King of the Jews by terror.
And the celestial warning that in their humble stable
was sent to the parents of Jesus by the Lord.

Nicolai Gedda (t), Narrator; Paris Conservatory Orchestra, André Cluytens, cond. EMI, recorded c1966 [audio link]


IN TOMORROW'S CHRISTMAS EVE EDITION OF SUNDAY CLASSICS --

We take our closer look at the Messiah tenor's accompagnato "Comfort ye," and then Sunday we hear a composite performance of all of Part I of Messiah. (We're going to follow something like this same plan next week for L'Enfance du Christ.)


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