Handel / Mozart: Messiah

Handel’s Masterpiece with Mozart’s Signature

With the oratorio »The Messiah« by George Frideric Handel, the Hamburger Oratorienchor performs one of the most popular works of sacred music in the Christian West with a large cast and accompanied by the Symphoniker Hamburg shortly before Easter. Composed by Handel in 1741, the three-part oratorio was adapted by Mozart in 1789 for performance in princely private rooms, and parts of it were rearranged. It was already a common practice in the Baroque era, but also in Mozart’s time, to arrange works for the respective performance, taking into account the instrumentation and quality of the respective orchestra. Mozart’s arrangement is an example of the listening habits of his time, and he took advantage of the new possibilities for orchestration, since some wind instruments had developed technically.