Messiah, HWV 56: He shall feed his flock
George Frideric Handel
Recording
Dunedin Consort, John Butt, Clare Wilkinson (contralto)
- Album
- Handel: Messiah (Dublin Version, 1742)
- Year
- 2006
- Length
- Period
- Baroque
- Listen
Painting
Lucas Gassel
Landscape with Windmills and Christ as Good Shepherd, ca. 1560–70
The piece
Handel set Isaiah 40:11 and Christ's words in Matthew 11:28–29 as one pastoral air in 12/8 time, the siciliana rhythm, near the close of Part One of Messiah. The oratorio was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742.
The recording
John Butt reconstructed the Dublin performances of 1742 for this recording, made with the Dunedin Consort at Greyfriars Kirk, Edinburgh, in May 2006, with Clare Wilkinson as soloist. It won the Baroque Vocal award at the 2007 Gramophone Awards, and David Vickers in Gramophone called it “the freshest, most natural, revelatory and transparently joyful Messiah I have heard for a very long time.”
Other recordings
Trevor Pinnock's recording with The English Concert on Archiv and William Christie's with Les Arts Florissants on Harmonia Mundi are period-instrument versions worth knowing.