Save<\/a>Share this articleCopy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\nFrom its 1742 Dublin premiere, Handel\u2019s Messiah was destined for greatness, loftily praised at the time by one George Faulkner as, \u201cthe sublime, the grand and the tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving words\u201d. <\/p>\n
\n Above all, he added, it \u201cconspired to transport and charm the ravished
\n heart and ear\u201d.\n <\/p>\n
On Sunday night, closing Auckland Choral\u2019s 2025 season, the iconic oratorio achieved all of that for a full house eager to experience what conductor Uwe Grodd described, in his lively welcoming speech, as a masterpiece that binds us together, as only great art can.<\/p>\n
All of which was made possible, it must be admitted, by that shrewd genius Handel, whose unerring sense of the theatrical and downright tunefulness might have made him, on the other side of the Atlantic, a few centuries later, a Broadway great.<\/p>\n
The glow of enjoyment was there from the first few phrases of Pipers Sinfonia\u2019s crisply delivered overture. It was fortified by Robert Macfarlane\u2019s first recitative, singling out a cry of \u201cComfort ye\u201d with dramatic dynamics rather than florid ornamentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Review by William Dart NZ Herald\u00b7 15 Dec, 2025 04:00 PM2 mins to read Subscribe to listenAccess to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[836,51,117235,18509,7875,156,117233,78,117234,111,139,69,6926,2791,10744],"class_list":["post-185901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-836","tag-auckland","tag-chorals","tag-closes","tag-dart","tag-entertainment","tag-handels","tag-in","tag-messiah","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-season","tag-style","tag-william"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}