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New Release:
Handel’s Messiah
2CDs + Bonus DVD

Jeannette Sorrell, conductor
Amanda Forsythe, soprano | Elizabeth Shammash, mezzo-soprano
Ian Honeyman & Ross Hauck, tenors |Jeffrey Strauss, baritone

Listen to the Music | ORDER NOW!

Bonus DVD includes:

“A Theatrical-Spiritual Journey”— Jeannette Sorrell provides insights into Handel’s Messiah score, with excerpts from live performance.
Watch a preview of Chapter 1

“The Musician as Storyteller: Translating Feelings into Music”— interviews with the artists and excerpts from rehearsal.
Watch a preview of Chapter 2

THE CONCEPT

In this striking and unusual approach to Handel’s masterpiece, Jeannette Sorrell and her hand-picked company of artists explore Messiah as the theatrical entertainment the composer intended. Starting from the point that an oratorio is a dramatic work – an opera on a Biblical subject – Sorrell takes Messiah back to its roots as a drama performed by theatrically trained singer-actors for an opera-going public.

Known for their “energy, discipline, style and pizzazz” (Boston Globe), Jeannette Sorrell and her ensemble have delved into the secrets of Handel’s score for fifteen years. Sorrell said, “I marvel every day at the boldness of the experiment that Handel and his librettist Charles Jennens undertook in 1741. Handel and Jennens courageously proclaimed their new work “A Sacred Oratorio” – in other words, a theatrical entertainment that is also a spiritual journey. That theatrical/spiritual duality caused criticism in Handel’s lifetime. But it is surely the reason why the piece continues to speak to so many people today.”

In the accompanying DVD, Sorrell describes how Handel responded to the challenge of musical storytelling. The DVD includes scenes from rehearsal and performances, interviews with the soloists and musicians, and commentary from Sorrell.

For this recording, Sorrell chose a quartet of vocal artists who share her view of the work as a drama. These “visionary storytellers” (Plain Dealer) take on the roles of the joyous angel bringing glad tidings, the anguished narrator of Jesus’ sufferings, the voice crying in the wilderness, and the victorious prophet of Christ’s triumph in the world to come.

REVIEWS

“The Messiah we’ve been waiting for.”
–Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The players take their namesake 'Fire' to heart." - The New York Times

“First rate… a winning, distinctive new version.”
– St. Louis Dispatch

“Over the years, music director Jeannette Sorrell has rethought and refined her vision of the piece to the point where Handel is both the most subtle and explosive of composers. Sorrell leads the score as if she were sharing artistic secrets or basking in the passionate content that flows from the page. Every phrase is shaped with a keen blend of fidelity and imagination. The Apollo's Fire musicians… show how intimacy brings the drama into tight, blazing focus…. This is a "Messiah" that tells its story with sometimes fierce power. Yet Sorrell also is a conductor who adores nuance. Choral clarity of this sort is almost unheard of today”
– The Plain Dealer

“Under the direction of Jeannette Sorrell, this Messiah sparkled. It danced. It moved. And it brought the sold-out crowd to its feet. The ensemble offered a rich, polished, deeply layered rendition of the masterpiece.”
–The Sun Press, Cleveland