The tracklist blurb for this British release allows that
Heinrich Schütz "would never have heard his music performed by forces such as these and on such a scale," but claims that "surely he would have been a strong advocate of this astounding aural experience." That's the kind of thing copywriters get paid for, but
Schütz more likely would have been mystified by this aural experience. The
National Youth Choir of Great Britain has 140 voices, for one thing, and the group has a uniquely lush, lyrical sound forged in the recordings of contemporary music that have been their stock-in-trade. There is no instrumental accompaniment, and pieces from various publications and of various functions are put together in mix-and-match groups of two or three pieces, interspersed with organ music by
Schütz's contemporaries (none of
Schütz's own having survived). The whole thing is so different from a historically oriented performance of
Schütz, or even the few performances by mainstream choirs, that it becomes something like a choral fantasy on
Schütz's music, akin almost to one of the unique choral arrangements of French conductor
Laurence Equilbey. It is what it is, and if that sounds good to you, it's well executed, with excellent intonation, a rigorous restraint of the tendency of young singers to belt syllabic passages, and plenty of sheer beauty of tone. Add in superb engineering, and you do indeed have something approaching an "astounding aural experience," and one tangentially related to the music of
Schütz besides.