Ask around and it seems everyone can recall a rendition of Hallelujah. Excerpts of the most famous song from George Frideric Handel's Messiah can be heard everywhere from movies to advertising and gospel radio. But few of us have had the opportunity to experience the world's most well-known oratorio work in its entirety.
The Messiah, written in 1742, has lent itself to so many revisions and intepretations that it's hard to distinguish the original from the spin-offs. And it was this very reason that helped Brazilian-born conductor Veiga Jardim (right) decide to bring his audience 'back in time' for an authentic Messiah experience.
'Handel was a brilliant composer because he knew how to make music spiritual and effective,' says Jardim, conductor/pianist and the former director of the Macau Chamber Orchestra. Jardim, with support of the Cultural Institute in Macau, will stage a special full-length performance of Messiah at the historical Sao Domingos Church, a 16th-century building that is as much a piece of history as Handel's composition itself.
Collaborating with the Hong Kong Oratorio Society, Jardim will be leading more than 50 musicians and a choir of close to 100 singers, as well as several soloists, in one of the biggest Easter concerts seen in these parts in recent years. Performances on Saturday, April 14, and Sunday, April 15, are expected to draw record crowds as tourists from Hong Kong and the mainland descend on Macau for the Easter weekend.
'I want to give audiences the feeling of how it was done in Handel's time,' Jardim says. 'This is the perfect atmosphere because Messiah is from the Baroque period and this is a Baroque church, so I don't want to do some fancy version with full orchestration.'
To achieve this, Jardim is pulling out all the stops, including playing and conducting from the harpsichord and using a score of Messiah by 20th-century composer Watkins Shaw, who is said to have scored the work straight from Handel's manuscripts.
