Customer Reviews

Schutz: Geistliche Chor-Music 1648

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This set is a wonderful new view of this timeless classic. The Ehmann set on Cantate, re-released a few years ago, remains an excellent version, but this new recording, also including the never recorded Litania and the rarely heard Grossman setting of Psalm 116 from 1621, is beautifully done, with bright, clean sonics. Highly recommended, for anyone who likes this type of music. For those who don't know this collection, it is Schutz's own choice for a sort of summa of his career... he chose concertos for the 1647 and 1650 Symphoniae sacrae, and this set is his 'last word' on the traditional (by then old-fashioned) motet. The main distinction is that the motets do not rely on a general bass or continuo. Some of his best known works, such as Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt and Das ist je gewisslich wahr are in this set, but there are many other rarely heard items, all of them top notch.

This is a respectable choral performance of sumptuous polyphony in the "old-practice" late Renaissance style, without continuo and with all five to seven voices equally conceived. It's very great music, in my huuummmble opinion, but this presentation doesn't do it full justice. The chorus is too broad in timbre; nuances of harmony and articulation are obscured. There is a far better performance available of the Geistliche Chormusik by the Bach Collegium Japan, conducted by Masaaki Suzuki, which costs twice as much but is musically worth at least three times as much.