Tonight the University of Hong Kong's Department of Music will present a version of George Frideric Handel's Messiah with a difference - orchestration by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
This interpretation of the work has been largely neglected in recent years, says Michael Ryan, who is directing the oratorio. 'People have been very keen on doing Handel the way Handel wanted it, and the trouble with this is it falls into the cracks. Is it Mozart or is it Handel? It's a bit of both, really, and that also makes it interesting,' he says.
'For the past 20 or 30 years there has been a lot of original instruments stuff and it is beginning to wear a bit thin. People are going back to playing Bach on the piano again, and doing things that are 'inauthentic'. The pendulum is swinging back again to something more creative - ideas going into performances.'
Ryan's idea for this performance is also unusual in Hong Kong - a 'sing in' in which five choirs will participate under his baton, supported by a chorus who will rehearse this afternoon, hours before the actual performance. Anybody who has sung the work before - and, ideally, who has a copy of the score - is welcome to participate, organisers say.
'The idea is to drag along the score,' says Ryan, a part-time lecturer with the University of Hong Kong's music department. 'We'll rehearse in the afternoon, break for tea and then we'll do it.'
Other voices will be supplied by the University of Hong Kong Chamber Choir, the City University of Hong Kong Staff Association Singing Group, the Hong Kong Bach Choir, the Hong Kong Oratorio Society and the Pro-Musica Society of Hong Kong.
Solos will be sung by sopranos Chen Ti-wei and Chiffon Lee, tenor Felix Suen and baritone Sylvester Che, and the Mozart orchestrations will be played by members of the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra.
