Search - Garrison Keillor :: Handel: Messiah (Highlights) / Solti, Chicago Symphony (Penguin Music Classics Series)

This is a fine set of Messiah excerpts, with Solti in his usual extroverted, theatrical vein, using a chorus of nearly 100 and a slimmed-down orchestra of 40 (not only large, but in opposite proportions to Handel's wishes, but why quibble?). The stars of the show are the amazingly trained chorus, who can diminuendo on a dime and whose enunciation of the text is a marvel; and soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, turning in what may be one of her loveliest, warmest performances on disc. The original liner notes by Garrison Keillor put Messiah in the author's always entertaining context--his first, stunning, hearing of the music whose text he and his Plymouth Brethren knew quite well, and his occasional terror of encountering nonprofessional performances which include sing-alongs. No such terror here. --Robert Levine