Although this live recording from Dublin bills itself as ''The 250th Anniversary Performance'', it makes neither authenticity nor a sense of occasion a priority. This is not, for those who care about such things, the essential 1742 Dublin version. ''But who may abide'' (then a mere recitative) is included, refiner's fire and all, in full brilliance and with the voice of Michael Chance on hand, it is easy to see why. The bland cadences of Sylvia McNair, though, offer less justification for the solo soprano version of ''How beautiful are the feet''. Marriner continues to pick and choose by using the regular London 1743 arioso for ''Lo the angel'', rather than the original short aria, yet prefers the dancing 12/8 ''Rejoice'' to the later 4/4 version
More important than all this by far, though, is the pedestrian nature of this performance. Orchestra and chorus offer either a bland, mellow pastoral mode, or else an ungrateful brusqueness. Articulation, both instrumental and vocal, is emphasized very much for its own sake and at any price. It would be difficult to find a less inspired ''Hallelujah'', a more pedantic ''Peace on earth'', or a more complacent trusting in God.
Apart from Chance, the casting is equally uninspired. Both Jerry Hadley and Sylvia McNair sing unidiomatically, rather as if they were performing Messiah: the musical; he smudging figuration, and with his potter's vessel about to fly off the wheel; she bland and casual, announcing that ''They King cometh unto thee'' as if it were the milkman on his rounds. Anne Sofie von Otter is her reliable, perfectly enunciated self: Robert Lloyd provides a dark, constricted bass, reluctant to open out from darkness to light.
The Dublin Journal, reporting on that first performance which this one claims to celebrate, praised it for reflecting ''The Sublime, the Grand and the Tender'' in Handel's work. It is these very qualities—embraced by Gardiner (Philips), Hogwood (L'Oiseau-Lyre), Pinnock (Archiv) and Hickox (Chandos)—to which Sir Neville and his team seem to have closed their hearts and their ears. '