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SITE RATING:  4/10 SITE REVIEW:  Malcolm Sargent's first Messiah recording for Columbia Records from 1946 is another performance very much of its times, with full-throated, unrestrained singing and playing from the soloists, orchestra, and choir, revealing not so much their lack of finesse, as the challenges of capturing such large forces in the mid-1940s.  Everyone had to project strongly in order to achieve the balance necessary with still relatively primitive equipment.  Sargent's first Messiah uses much the same forces as his later outstanding 1959 recording, with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Huddersfield Choral Society taking the ensemble duties, and sounding much worse here than their latter collaboration, with some of the blame shared equally between Sargent's tempos, which take on the characteristics of drying paint, and the poor sound, with the mono recording sounding very muddy and thick.  Add to that the choir's flat, strident vowels, and the orchestra sounding as if it was recorded inside a cardboard box, and you have a frustrating listening experience.  The soloists leave much to be desired, with Gladys Ripley's fluttery alto and tenor James Johnston's overheated arias too much for me; bass Norman Walker has a pleasant tone and general delivery, but falters against better latter-day choices, and soprano Isobel Baillie posessing a flutey, quavering tone that was extremely curious, but also ill-matched with the material.  Out of print in the United States, but cheaply available through the German TIM Company, this is a Messiah that will only be of interest to historic musicologists.

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