I wouldn't, to be honest, pop any of these Messiahs into my Christmas stockings. The differences between them—and there are many—are not only matters of taste, but involve serious inconsistencies of style and standard. And very few, whatever their stylistic stance, resonate with a conviction of performance equal to that of either the words or the musical inspiration. When the angel's message functions like an entrance in a minor baroque opera, and the passage from darkness to light is traversed with all the spiritual conviction of a dimmer switch, then you might as well forget it.
Andrew Davis, in his apologia, aims for a conscious ''revival of the 'grand' tradition''. But, of course, he and his performers have consciously or subconsciously assimilated something of the purges of the authenticity movement on the way; and the result is an amenable but dull compromise between the pomp of tradition and the circumstance of stylistic nicety. He cuts the number of strings for ''I know that my Redeemer liveth'', and uses a full symphony orchestra for ''He was despised''. He eases the voice out of darkness into ''but the Lord shall arise'', but doesn't quite gauge the nerve-change between ''Surely He hath borne our griefs'' to ''And with His stripes we are healed''. (Sir Colin Davis, who uses an a capella choir for the latter on his Philips recording is, in fact, the only one to make anything of this subtle transformation.)
The Toronto Mendelssohn Choir sound fewer in number than they really are. Open-throated, youthful and eager, they sing with a winsome combination of gentleness and verve, but they do tend to overpoint for the sake of rhythmic clarity. And they lack real presence. We simply want more from them and more from the work than this.
The recording's strength lies in its choice of male soloists. John Aler's high, lithe, entirely idiomatic singing gives unmitigated pleasure throughout. Apart from Anthony Rolfe Johnson (for Gardiner/Philips) no other tenor springs through the line and paces the recitative with such style and ease; and Aler's own Frenchified ornaments give back the bouquet to Handel's writing. Ramey performs with equal panache. For once the character and colour of the bass voice do not stand in the way of the music's nimble temper: one does not, perhaps, have to sound like an ogre to portray Divine omnipotence, eighteenth-century style. Ramey, with true coloratura singing, bears in mind that the flames belong to the fire of a refiner, not a pyromaniac. This is thrilling as a bass aria: Gardiner, Solti and Sir Colin Davis give it to the contralto.
The female voices disappoint. Quivar has too much of that eponymous quality: she tends to inflect through the vowel rather than through the phrase, and her singing is sober rather than affective. Battle provides a child's conception of a Christmas-card angel: chaste, unmoved, faultless in vocal line and dexterity, but remaining on the surface of the score. Margaret Price (for Davis) comes nearest to capturing the fusion of child-like wonder and adult conviction essential to ''I know that my Redeemer liveth''; and only the boy soprano Saul Quirke (for Gardiner) realizes the thrill of rhythm, harmony and melodic shape in Handel's writing for the angel.
And so to Richter. Three CDs break the work neatly into its three parts (as does Sir Colin Davis's recording), and remind us that Karl Richter is a man with his very own authenticity. This is a Messiah of austere authority: his Sinfonia, weighty with dignity rather than double-dotting, leaves us in no doubt that something memontous is afoot: John Eliot Gardiner's, at the other end of the scale, tells us that a musical performance is about to take place. Listeners will judge for themselves which Handel might have preferred.
Richter's tempos are predictably conservative: an almost martial ''And the glory of the Lord'' has the harpsichord stomping along; his Larghettos invariably turn into Largos. Yet his hard-working, full-bodied strings do play through the notes, so that both gravitas and vigour have equal resonance. This performance, unlike that of Andrew Davis, is entirely naked of ornament: it stands sombre and plain as a Bauhaus monument. Burrows is younger yet less wide-awake for Richter than for Sir Colin Davis 13 years later; both he and Anna Reynolds, though, temper simplicity with humanity in singing which is entirely in character with Richter's direction. McIntyre is less sensitive to the style of either the music in general or this performance in particular. His phrasing is plebeian, his coloratura dull to the point of caricature. Helen Donath gives a splash of bright colour to the sombre palette, but there is something forced in her vibrato and her articulation.
Solti's stylistic mish-mash on Decca, with Dame Kiri Te Kanawa in fluorescent form, comes out better in its highlights version, as I mentioned this time last year (417 449-1DH; CD 417 449-2DH, 12/86). Sir Colin Davis's performance comes nearest to all-round satisfaction and integrity, so great is the delight of its orchestral playing. But it is spoilt by the hooting contralto of Hanna Schwarz, just as Eliot Gardiner's often enticing line-up of period instruments and nimble voices is weakened by a preciosity and self-consciousness which draws attention first to the performers and only second to the music.'