Handel’s Messiah did not always receive the almost universal acclaim that it is accorded today. Although the first performances, which took place in Dublin in April of 1742, were notable successes, Handel faced public and ecclesiastical resistance to the use of scripture as the basis for secular entertainment. He had already come up against this wall with his earlier oratorios Saul and Israel in Egypt, and his canny business sense—and the insistence of Irish clerics who controlled the choirs for the premieres—led him to stage those first performances as benefits.

Handel made no such appeal to charity when, on his return to London, he sought to incorporate Messiah into his 1743 season. Despite the fact that the work was held in great esteem by King George II, clerical opposition caused these performances to fail miserably. It was not until the death of Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London—the man who led the opposition to the work—that Messiah began its rather quick climb to the monumental status that it enjoys today.

Like many other great monuments, Messiah has been much altered over its existence. It began life as a piece for rather modest-sized forces, but its theme and the nature of its music made it a target for all sorts of augmentation and improvement. As early as 1784, the Westminster Abbey Commemoration began the tradition of performing Messiah with a gigantic orchestra and chorus. Continuing this tradition of enlargement, Baron van Swieten commissioned Mozart to recompose the piece substantially. Subsequent performances of this version—which continues to be performed and recorded today—called for 95 violins, 26 violas, 21 cellos, 15 double basses, 26 oboes, 6 flutes, 26 bassoons, 12 horns, 12 trumpets, 3 trombones, 4 timpani and a choir of 275. Not even Wagner worked with forces like that.

Of course, such substantial alteration has prompted calls to return to an original concept of Messiah. The question remains, which original? Even at those first Dublin performances, Handel was adding to and pulling from the score with all the vengeance of a show doctor trying to make an out-of-town flop into a hit. Choruses, recitatives and arias came and went with revolving-door swiftness throughout the rest of Handel’s life, so much so that Messiah remains one of the works on which Handel himself made the most changes. One current approach has been to return to the original performance practice and instrumentation; another has been to condense orchestral and choral forces into something resembling a chamber ensemble.

It is this chamber-ensemble approach that the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and chorus opted for in its recent performances at the Ryman Auditorium. The program did not list the performers in the reduced ensemble, but the corps of instrumental players could not have numbered much more than 40—less than half the size of a full orchestra, and considerably smaller than even a pit orchestra in a small opera house.

It was apparent from the first few measures of Saturday’s performance that the instrumentalists were in top form. From the beginning, the good crisp playing and Ron Huff’s energetic conducting made for a spirited reading that came off with a singularity of purpose. It would be difficult to pick out one section or group that excelled more than its fellows, but special praise needs to be given to the continuo group headed by keyboard principal Charlene Harb. William Wiggins, principal timpanist, provided that extra zing for the big choruses. And the string soloists in the famous instrumental “Pifa” were the tenderest shepherds imaginable.

Again, however, the brilliance of this performance was the ensemble playing of the whole group. Trills and ornaments could not have been more together if they had been performed by a solitary player, and the true unity of dynamic contrasts pulled the drama from the music. The instrumental parts were delineated as sharply as the engraving on baroque silver; even under the load of counterpoint in “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain,” the playing never became muddied.

If the Nashville Symphony Chorus was not quite as unified as the players, theirs was still a most impressive performance. They seemed inclined to settle on slower tempi than what the director and instrumentalists were following, but these synchronization problems were quickly corrected. Through their controlled dynamic shading, the chorus was able to bring off nuances in emotion that, in lesser hands, are all too often steamrollered into note spinning. A good example of this was the tenor section’s work on “His yoke is easy, and his burden is light.”

The chorus’ approach to phrasing was also a delightful surprise at times. Others may have been swept up in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but for me, the changing emphases for the titles of the Messiah was one of the highlights of the chorus’s work. It was a pleasant shock to hear each note of the phrase “Prince of Peace” crisply done rather than slurred. There were problems—some poor attacks, a greater number of vague cutoffs, and some difficulties with delineation of sound—but these were more than outweighed by the general excellence and the frequent brilliance of the choir’s performance.

The weakest part of Messiah was the soloists’ work. In almost every instance, there was some quality of the voice or approach to the role that rendered each performance merely adequate. Tenor Tracy Prentice turned in the best work; he had the strongest voice and was better able to project, but at moments of emphasis he had a tendency to push for dramatic effect. This forcing frequently caused a catch in his vibrato and a subsequent loss of pitch. Bass Dan Rust seemed to be bluffing his way through his numbers in a woofy tunelessness that was frequently covered by the ensemble. Wayne Gurley’s tenor instrument also lacked power and lyric lightness. In “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted,” he constantly veered off pitch, but he did display some fine breath control and smoothness in some of the number’s longer ornamentations.

Of the women soloists, Tricia Lepofsky had a fine smile in her voice that mated perfectly with the emotions of her numbers. Unfortunately, her voice did not have a solid enough bottom for some of the low notes; it was a small instrument that sometimes had trouble cutting through the ensemble. Kate Carr’s oboe-like voice and comfort with the melismatic passages of “Rejoice Greatly” were still unequal to the task of being heard throughout the hall. And soprano Jan Volk, whose vibrato continually flattened out into a piping sound, seemed to have a very bad case of nerves.

In conclusion, I’d like to say something about performances in the Ryman Auditorium: Let’s have more of them. All that wood and plaster make the Ryman one of Nashville’s friendliest acoustic spaces. I have been told for years by musician friends that it is one of the best places in town for performers—the musicians can actually hear each other, and that builds ensemble polish. The smell of popcorn from the concessions stand and the maddening lust for a Goo-Goo may be ever-present distractions, but self-discipline is the beginning of art.