Amazing pieces of classical music - 16
And, of course, there's Handel's Messiah (HWV 56), an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 of which the text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalter. This marvel of a work was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
That Kenneth Clark's tv-series Civilization was especially fond of the female voice in their soundtrack had thus yet again been demonstrated by the addition of this particular performance of one excerpt from Handel's Messiah. It's the work performed with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction by Leopold Stokowski in 1966, and the most successful of the excerpts was indeed "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth", featuring a superb vocal performance by soprano Sheila Armstrong, who smoothly interpreted the melody line. She was a singer from Ashington, Northumberland, who had won the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award in London the previous year
[media=https://youtu.be/RNrUXOQV2uE]
That Kenneth Clark's tv-series Civilization was especially fond of the female voice in their soundtrack had thus yet again been demonstrated by the addition of this particular performance of one excerpt from Handel's Messiah. It's the work performed with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction by Leopold Stokowski in 1966, and the most successful of the excerpts was indeed "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth", featuring a superb vocal performance by soprano Sheila Armstrong, who smoothly interpreted the melody line. She was a singer from Ashington, Northumberland, who had won the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Award in London the previous year
[media=https://youtu.be/RNrUXOQV2uE]
