SITE RATING: 2/10
SITE REVIEW:
One of the sloppiest Messiahs
I've ever had the misfortune to hear, I'm not entirely sure how this
particular recording was a.) produced, seeing as its the Oratorio
Society of New York, recorded in Warsaw, Poland (?), and b.) why it's
been reissued both in 1994 and 2009? From it's credentials,
you'd
think that this was a pretty reliable group, right? Not so
fast.
The Oratorio Society of New York, circa 1990 sounds very
shabby,
more of a neighborhood Community Choir than anything else, and not a
very good one at that. The sound, for being a studio
recording,
is very muddy, and it doesn't sound as if any effort was made to
correct mistakes of any kind - notes go flat, melismas are all over the
place, vowels and consonants are similarly unfocused, and the soloists
are definitely NOT world class, (and this despite their singing in a
different continent!) The whole effort smells of "quick and
cheap" - and it leads me to suspect that this was a thrown-together
project done on the fly. Woodside's tempos are generally on
the
mark, but this recording has no right to stand shoulder-to-shoulder
with professionally-produced and performed Messiahs.
Pass this one by.
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