'Messiah'
would like to say how strongly I agree with Mr. Charles Reid's comments on the LPO Christ- mas performance of Messiah in your issue of December 24, and how much I hope his criticisms may have some effect.
I am sure many concertgoers are getting tired of the sort of 'prissy and exiguous' accompaniments which Mr. Reid objects to; but these qualities, all too often nowadays, are not confined to accompani- ments. Could we now have a rest from prissy and exiguous singing in, e.g., 'For unto us a Son is born'? In recent years it has become the fashion for the chorus to render this noble paean of praise and thanksgiving in coy and confidential manner, as if imparting the information from behind eighteenth- century fans; could this tiresome affectation now be dropped?
And perhaps next year, if the LPO is going to indulge in the heavy Victorian sentimentality of turning out the lights in the hall, playing the 'Pastoral' Symphony in the glow from the Christmas trees, and bringing the lights up again during the Christmas recitatives, the soprano might be allowed to sing those recitatives with some feeling for the words, instead of being made to chatter and patter through them, to a prissy and exiguous accompani- ment, as if she had turned into Susanna or Despina.
M. %V. PALMER
Watergate House, Bosham, Sussex
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