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It's very very difficult to do a full Messiah in under two hours; what you probably heard was a version with cuts. That being said, 141 minutes is not extraordi
by Bud 6y ago
It's very very difficult to do a full Messiah in under two hours; what you probably heard was a version with cuts. That being said, 141 minutes is not extraordinarily fast overall. Hogwood's recording is 136 minutes; you can find others that are a bit faster yet.
- tom_mellior 6y agoFor concreteness, the Harnoncourt recording I had in mind is this one: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyXewGfDx5l0xsWKwAlHTT9P_elygrNF2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyXewGfDx5l0xsWKwAlHT.... According to the calculator at https://ytplaylist-len.herokuapp.com/ https://ytplaylist-len.herokuapp.com/ this has a total length of 147 minutes. At 1.25x speed it would be 118 minutes. I only did a very quick check, but playing it at 1.25x speed does sound comparable to other recordings I've heard. So I'm sure it's doable and would sound okay-ish. I know I have at least once heard a full (uncut) version on the radio that fit exactly into a 2 hour slot. Needless to say, I found it too fast. But it's true that I can't point you to a specific two-hour recording right now.