A Superfluous Messiah?

There are probably few pieces of music that have been recorded as often as Handel’s Messiah. And there are some great recordings by some of the best performers and conductors ever. Thus, one might justifiably be surprised by a new recording and wonder: why do we need yet another one? Indeed, we shall bear this question in mind and come back to it later. Very recently, Naxos released its Messiah recording with the Choir of New College, Oxford. This praised itself as being the first ever recording of the 1751 version, in which Handel used trebles not only for the choruses but for the arias as well. And now we have René Jacobs’ recording, which features the 1750 version of Messiah. All the different versions of the oratorio seem to justify the abundance of recordings.Over the last decade or so, Jacobs made himself a name as a conductor –…