Schütz: Psalmen Davids [Import]

Heinrich Schutz (Composer), Concerto Palatino (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Concerto Palatino
• Composer: Heinrich Schutz
• Audio CD (September 8, 1998)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Format: Import
• Label: Harmonia Mundi Fr.
• ASIN: B00000C2A3
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #362,575 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Psalmen Davids: Zion spricht: der Herr hat mich verlassen, SWV 46

2. Psalmen Davids: Ach Herr, straf mich nicht in deinem Zorn, SWV 24

3. Psalmen Davids: Ich freue mich des, das mir geredt ist, SWV 26

4. Psalmen Davids: Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen, SWV 29

5. Psalmen Davids: Warum toben die Heiden, SWV 23

6. Psalmen Davids: An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir, SWV 37

7. Psalmen Davids: Der Herr ist mein Hirt, SWV 33

8. Psalmen Davids: Danket dem Herren, denn er ist freundlich, SWV 45

9. Psalmen Davids: Die mit Tränen säen, SWV 42

10. Psalmen Davids: Jauchzet dem Herren, alle Welt, SWV 47

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Psalmen Davids: Alleluja! Lobet den Herren, SWV 38

2. Psalmen Davids: Ich danke dem Herrn von ganzen Herzen, SWV 34

3. Psalmen Davids: Lobe den Herren, meine Seele, SWV 39

4. Psalmen Davids: Wohl dem, der den Herren fürchtet, SWV 44

5. Psalmen Davids: Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren, SWV 41

6. Psalmen Davids: Der Herr sprach zu meinem Herrn, SWV 22

7. Psalmen Davids: Aus der Tiefe ruf ich, Herr, zu dir, SWV 25

8. Psalmen Davids: Herr, user Herrscher, SWV 27

9. Psalmen Davids: Wohl dem, der nicht wandelt, SWV 28

10. Psalmen Davids: Ich heb meine Augen auf zu den Bergen, SWV 31

See all 13 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Respect for his texts--especially religious texts--was always paramount for Schütz; unfortunately, that respect sometimes makes his Lutheran music tough going for non-German-speakers. That always seemed to be a problem with the Psalmen Davids, in spite of the lavish and varied scoring (two to four soloists, one or two SATB choirs, strings, brass--all in various combinations in different pieces). Not here, though: the huge variety of emotion in the Psalms--from joy to fury to penitence to serenity--translates perfectly, thanks to the subtlety and grace of Cantus Cölln and Concerto Palatino. Junghänel's singers perform one-voice-per-part throughout, yet they lose little in contrast (compared with a full chorus) and nothing in excitement. (If you want a full chorus, try the performance led by Frieder Bernius on Sony Classical.) --Matthew Westphal.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Heinrich Schütz spent his Study Fellowship to Venice, July 14, 2000

By 

Pamela F. Starr (Lincoln, NE USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Schütz: Psalmen Davids (Audio CD)

Heinrich Schütz, Germany's greatest composer before Bach, was incredibly fortunate: his employers, two different German princes, paid for extended study trips to Venice for the young composer. Venice was one of the great musical centers of the seventeenth century, and Schütz used his time very wisely by studying with two of the greatest Italian composers of the time: first with Giovanni Gabrieli, then with Claudio Monteverdi. The new recording "Heinrich Schütz: Psalmen Davids" reveals the fruits of his first tour of study in Venice, with Gabrieli. It is a collection of the psalm settings in German that Schütz made while in Venice and shortly afterwards. These pieces are modelled on the opulent, even extravagent Venetian style that Gabrieli designed for the church of San Marco, but with unmistakeable signs of the unique gifts of the talented young German composer. This recording is simply spectacular. The vocal and instrumental forces of Cantus Cölln and Concerto Palatino, under the expert dirction of Konrad Junghänel, are perfectly balanced, and all performers are highly virtuosic. The diction is impeccable, the singing and playing sensitive both to performance practices of the time, and to the extraordinary expressiveness of the composer's musical style. The recording qualities are exemplary. This is a "must own" recording for anyone who loves Baroque music of the seventeenth century!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Musical Supernova, February 13, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schütz: Psalmen Davids (Audio CD)

When the young Heinrich Schuetz returned from Venice to Kassel in 1613, he'd probably already begun some of the psalm settings that he would eventually include in his first, massive publication in 1619, in which he proclaimed his obligation to his teacher Gabrieli and to the "Italian" manner at large. Schuetz is widely credited for bringing the Italian manner, the declamatory vocal style of Monteverdi as much as the grand polychoral style of Gabrieli, to "Germany", and you will hear his total mastery of Italian musical ideas in every setting of these Psalms. But if you listen well, you will also hear the next century of German music - Tunder, Biber, Pachelbel, Bach - being born like Minerva almost full-grown from the head of Heinrich.

There was no "Germany" in 1619, yet a case can be made that Heinrich Schuetz was the first great German composer. Don't forget that during the late Renaissance the musical world north of the Brenner Pass was chiefly the Hapsburg Empire, a cosmopolitan world in which the dominant musical language was the international style founded by the great Franco-Flemish composers, most of whom had worked in Italy. Oodles of German musicians, from the Stadtpfeifer guilds, had traveled to Italian cities for better-paying gigs, most never to return north. The favored composers of the Hapsburgs, even those with Germanized names, were often Italian in origin or training. North of Hapsburgia were the chiefly Protestant provinces, where local pastors dabbled, sometimes very well, in music for their own communities, but even their work is largely derivative of the Franco-Flemish tradition. Then, in this magnificent collection of Psalms, Schuetz virtually invented the declamatory potential of the German language: lobet den Herrn! praise the Lord, and if you can't fore-hear Bach in that, you need to dewax your ears. The powerful resonant bass instruments, the trombones and early bassoons, that are so much a part of later German music are already present in Schuetz; the instruments were not new, but the stylistic use of them certainly was. Schuetz owed a great deal to Gabrieli but no experienced listener would ever mistake a Schuetz composition for the work of an Italian.

The city and court of Dresden, where Schuetz was working when he published Psalmen Davids, was the home of some of the best performing musicians in all Europe at the time, and the forces Schuetz could expect to employ in a concert were both capable and ample. This CD performance by Cantus Coelln and Concerto Palatino involves nine singers and twenty seven instrumentalists, and as another reviewer declares, Schuetz probably intended live performance by larger forces. In our age of electronics, however, larger forces would NOT be more effective, however authentic; older recordings of the Psalmen Davids demonstrate what happens when too many people sing into the microphone. Rumble and whirr, all white noise, nothing human-sounding in a choir of 40! To my ear, director Konard Junghanel has achieved a near perfect balance of power and clarity, sonority and transparency. Every soloist has a rich and moving timbre as well as impeccable technique. Every instrument sounds like itself, as well as being fingered and tooted virtuosically. Alas, Schuetz was almost never able to employ such vast and skillful musical resources in his later career, most of which took place during the desolation of the Thirty Years War. Thus, although his Symphoniae Sacrae and his various Passions are of unsurpassed musical brilliance, these Psalmen remain his most "magnificent" music. All through the 20th Century, musicologists proclaimed the importance of Heinrich Schuetz for the subsequent history of music, but very few performances were at all persuasive. It has taken us time to recreate the practices and skills to bring Schuetz to life, but this performance has convinced me: no greater music has ever been written.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great recording, using some of Schütz' own options, May 31, 2006

By 

Mark A. Leach (Columbia, South Carolina United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Schütz: Psalmen Davids (Audio CD)

This is an exceptionally fine recording, as one would expect from these groups, not at all lacking in splendor despite the relatively small peforming group. The present review is intended merely to point out that one earlier reviewer, critical of the size of the forces employed, does not seem to have read the entire preface to the Psalmen Davids, in which Schütz calls only the Cori Favoriti (the group of soloists) essential. The larger group of optional, less skilled, singers (the Capelle) can be nice, but is not required, as the Cori Favoriti has all of the essential parts. Hence this recording would seem to be very much within the boundaries of performance practice established by Schütz himself. There is an excellent discussion of the varieties of performance practice relevant to Schütz' Psalmen Davids in the complete Schutz edition (available in any good music library), edited by Wilhelm Ehmann, should the original preface be hard to come by.