Messiah to be Streamed on Easter Saturday

Australia's 5-time ARIA Award winning baroque orchestra, Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Brandenburg Choir, will this Saturday stream the world's most performed baroque work, Handel’s MESSIAH. The celebrated performance from February 2017 at Melbourne Recital Centre will be available on the Brandenburg Facebook page and Melbourne Recital Centre YouTube channel as scheduled Premiere events at 5pm Saturday 11 April. 2020.
 
“Handel was the greatest composer that ever lived. I would uncover my head and kneel before his tomb,” Beethoven said about Handel.
 
In 2017 the Brandenburg for the first time performed baroque’s greatest hit in Sydney and Melbourne.  The 90-minute performance, with four shining young vocal soloists, was captured on film which will be shown this weekend.
 
The international line-up of soloists, who Paul Dyer, Artistic Director of the ABO, brought together for the performance are

- Lucía Martín-Cartón – Spanish soprano is one of the early music industry's brightest young stars. She was the winner of the Renata Tebaldi International Voice Competition and toured Australia in 2015 as a guest artist with Les Arts Florissant.
 
Nicholas Spanos – Greek countertenor who has won Best Young Artist of the Year in Greece and whose recording in the title role of Handel’s Tamerlano won the prestigious ECHO Klassik Award.
 
Kyle Bielfield – Sydney-based American tenor is a Masters graduate of the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. He has performed in opera in the US and Canada, and recorded an album of music by American composers for the Delos label.
 
David Greco – Australian baritone who shone in his role of The Engineer in Opera Australia’s Sydney Opera House – The Opera, performed on the steps of the iconic building.

Images (l to r): Lucía Martín-Cartón (soprano, Spain), Nicholas Spanos (alto, Greece), Kyle Bielfield (tenor USA) and David Greco (bass, Australia).

Constantine Costi’s staging captures movement and space and a real sense of theatre in his first collaboration with the Brandenburg.  Drawing on shape and form from baroque art, a simple message of hope emerges from a dark and an almost dreamlike state.
 
“The iconic Hallelujah chorus is guaranteed to fill hearts with joy.  Who doesn’t experience an endorphin rush when they hear or perform it?” asks Paul Dyer.  “The Messiah brings people such overwhelming pleasure and it is easy to understand its phenomenal popularity.”