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.
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