There is a refreshing involvement of the whole sensibility here. The oratorio-style has traditionally been kept distinct from the operatic, so that oratorio arias are sung as it were by everybody and nobody. The impersonal manner, it is true, confers dignity and guards against intrusion of personality; but it is also a kind of musical stained-glass—the human figure is there, immobile and immutable, unliving and unlikely ever to have lived in any very credible way. The assumption behind the performances in this recital is that Isaiah and the Psalmist were men and not attitudes, and that the anonymous meditators upon the betrayal of Christ and the creation of man were also individuals, who at the moment of utterance are 'there' in their imagination, spontaneously moved to a personal (not a generalized) reaction.
With this in view, tenor Heilmann and conductor Schreier work as one. In the excerpts from Messiah, Schreier may well be reliving his own recording as a singer, but providing an expressive setting which the placid regularity of Mackerras's conducting (Archiv, 11/90) had failed to offer. In ''Trostet Zion'' (''Comfort ye, my people'') Heilmann delivers his message with emotion, also with an intimacy that comes from an individual and goes to an individual. Without elaborate ornamentation, the phrases are alive with contrasting tones and an urgency of communication. So too are the arias which follow, the Bach and Mozart, and—probably best—Haydn and Mendelssohn, 'best' if only because there are no runs in them, so that Heilmann's non-legato articulation of such things cannot annoy people who like myself have some memory of their having been done otherwise. I was going to recommend Walter Widdop of 1929 but there is no need to go back quite so far, for Schreier's own singing, in the Mackerras recording mentioned above, will serve as a corrective. Heilmann hammers out every note, clean and distinct, but to my mind it's a poor way of doing the job, and becomes very tiresome as one florid aria follows another.
This is the one major fault. His tone is bright, incisive, pure and youthful, his expression keenly alert in shading and variety: but I shall have a quarrel with him as long as he sings his runs like a pianist playing semi-staccato. The orchestral work is mostly fine, and the exaggerated brushstrokes of Schreier's way with the opening phrase in ''Trostet Zion'' (which opens the programme) is not typical. The second Messiah excerpt, incidentally, may surprise the listener who is not too well up on the Mozart arrangement: part of the pleasure consists in solving the little mystery for oneself so I will not spoil it, only add that the German hardly suggests the English words. I think (incidentally again) that it would have been preferable to have given a literal English translation of these German texts in the booklet: ''Geduld'', for example, does not mean ''Rejoice''.'