“Messiah” rewarding for two reasons

This year’s performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Bulawayo Municipal Orchestra is rewarding because of the adoption of the Watkins-Shaw edition of the score and because of some fine solo singing. The Watkins-Shaw edition restores the orchestra to the modest size Handel himself would have expected. The gain in textural clarity is substantial and the music moves with a buoyant purposefulness much closer to Handel’s muse than the foggy re-scorings we are accustomed to.

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City orchestra in striking form

A.R. Sibson wrote his First Symphony, in A minor, in 1948 in memory of his son Maxell. It was written with the resources of the Bulawayo Municipal Orchestra specifically in mind. In a time of grief it was a courageous undertaking, the more so because the Symphony rises to a final mood of triumph and affirmation. Despite some lapses of discipline, the performance last night by the Orchestra with Mr. Sibson conducting, was both striking and moving.

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