This year’s performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Bulawayo Municipal Orchestra is rewarding because of the adoption of the Watkins-Shaw edition of the score and because of some fine solo singing. The Watkins-Shaw edition restores the orchestra to the modest size Handel himself would have expected. The gain in textural clarity is substantial and the music moves with a buoyant purposefulness much closer to Handel’s muse than the foggy re-scorings we are accustomed to.
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