Several of Germany's leading boys' choirs have recorded the big choral works of Heinrich Schütz. Members of
Windsbacher Knabenchor, creators of a recent group with conductor
Karl-Friedrich Beringer, are not the best-known or most sonically flawless among them, but their talents are peculiarly well suited to the music of the seventeenth century master. Schütz had a way of entering into sacred texts musically, producing not personal responses but emotional fervor that seems universal, that was matched in the history of German music only by Johann Sebastian Bach. Several of the psalms among the Psalmen David heard here are familiar from Bach's settings, but the Schütz versions have their own profundity. The
Windsbacher youths sound like they understand what they're singing about; they articulate the words beautifully and expressively. The result is that a psalm like the final An den Wassern zu Babel sassen wir und weineten (By the waters of Babylon we sat and wept) has a strong emotional impact even if you can get more chillingly perfect soprano lines from the likes of the
Regensburger Domspatzen. This is the disc to buy if you want just one of the
Windsbachers' releases; the more Olympian discourse of the Geistliche Chormusik of Schütz's late life is less suited to their direct approach although still well worth hearing. The booklet, explaining the issues of Schütz's early career in terms anybody can understand, is a good fit with the music, and the engineering passes one of the sound recordist's toughest tests -- working with children -- beautifully. Texts are only in German, but any Bible, dusty as it may be, will furnish English translations.