The National Symphony Orchestra’s annual presentation of Handel’s Messiah is most intriguing when helmed by guest conductors more associated with historically-informed approaches to the work. 

For 2024’s iteration, which opened Thursday night in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, the orchestra had a particularly notable interpreter in this vein with Masaaki Suzuki, famed leader of the Bach Collegium Japan.

Presiding over substantially reduced NSO forces with a continuo section of organ and harpsichord, Suzuki brought an appealing combination of fleetness and muscle to Handel’s music. Making room for flowing dance rhythms in “And the Glory of the Lord,” driving tempi in “He Trusted in God,” and decibel pushing climaxes in “Worthy is the Lamb,” Suzuki’s project was less about getting the NSO to impersonate a baroque orchestra and more about bringing some period sensibility and degree of sensitivity to bear without forsaking the brilliance and range of contemporary orchestral sound. 

That period articulation, filtered through the bite and sheen of the NSO’s modern strings, produced an intriguing, sometimes astringent quality, but the verve of Suzuki’s conducting and the orchestra’s responsiveness ultimately won out in an idiosyncratic but winning traversal of Handel’s flagship.

The University of Maryland Concert Choir (prepared by artistic director Jason Max Ferdinand), has served as a frequent Messiah partner for the NSO in recent years, and proved a precision instrument for Suzuki’s handling of the choral numbers, dispatching Handel’s fugal writing with energy and accuracy at taxing speeds. Featuring a complement of around 50 singers, the group produced a rich, hall-filling sound in combined moments like the finale of “His yoke is easy” and the “Hallelujah” chorus, while a premium on textual clarity added transparency to the overlapping lines.

That precision and the need to keep pace with Suzuki’s exacting demands could come at the expense of a through-line at times, with overly clipped phrases stunting the effect of passages like “Unto us a child is born.” More varied articulation might have helped in the big run of part II choral numbers, including “All we, like sheep,” and “He Trusted in God.” But overall this was an impressive reckoning with Messiah’s myriad choral challenges.

Tenors and basses anchored the overall sound with a sturdy core, tenors in particular delivering an appealing unified and lightweight timbre in that section’s exposed passages. Other sections faced a few more sonic bumps, with some spreading in the upper reaches of the sopranos’ ranges and an alto sound that could lack depth at times.

The cast of soloists featured countertenor Reginald Mobley in the alto role, a common practice today though notably not a historical imperative. (Messiah’s alto role was premiered by contralto Susannah Cibber.) Mobley’s languid tone and intimate phrasing captivated in gentle moments like the outer sections of “He was despised” and “But who may abide the day of his coming,” though his sound quickly grew pallid and vocal support choppy in more challenging material.

Jone Martínez has a nearly ideal upper register for the soprano part, ascending to a flute-like sound of great purity in the work’s showpieces. “If God be for us, who can be against us” and “How beautiful are the feet” were finely felt, though a sense of emotional journey was curiously missing from a successfully executed but largely inert “I know that my redeemer liveth.”

Tenor Lunga Eric Hallam’s attractive tenor is well-suited to Handel, though some stridency in the part’s top notes and effortful runs marred the overall picture. Bass-baritone Dashon Burton brought a keen theatrical sense to the bass’s recitatives and arias, drawing on different vocal weights and textures to add a sense of surprise.

For those keeping score, this was a slightly shorn rendition, with choral numbers “The Lord gave the word,” “Since by man came death,” and the duet “O death where is thy sting” among the handful of excised B-sides in parts II and III.

Handel’s Messiah will be repeated 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 1 p.m. Sunday in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall. kennedy-center.org

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