Cappella Amsterdam & Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin . Daniel Reuss

Ever since its first performance in Dublin on 13 April 1742, Handel's 'Messiah' has remained an absolute icon of Western music. This oratorio already began to establish its popularity during Handel's lifetime. He reworked it several times to better accommodate the changed circumstances in which it might be performed: a new cast of singers, for instance. In the decades after Handel's death in 1759, the 'Messiah' gained real cult status. Grand performances were staged in the latter part of the eighteenth century as a matter of course and even more so during the nineteenth, when they included hundreds of performers. Only in the late twentieth century did such innovators as Harnoncourt and Brüggen attempt to peel away the thick layers of dust and varnish to reveal the true work and scale it back down to its historically original proportions. It is this path that the Berlin Akademie für Alte Musik and conductor Daniel Reuss have chosen to take: they present a 'Messiah' on a human level, a work about human genesis and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, themes that spurred Handel to give of his very best.