Heinrich Schütz is the Rodney Dangerfield among the great masters; despite his enormous output and unchallenged status as the father of the German Baroque, Schütz is truly only popular in German-speaking lands and to a lesser degree in England. Although Schütz's music is recorded with frequency and by ensembles of the highest caliber, the Schütz section in record stores devoted to deep classical catalog is one place where the cobwebs generally gather. It appears that if you like Schütz, you're crazy about him, and if not, there's no middle ground -- you simply don't go there. One longstanding catalog item for Schütz that has enjoyed high critical acclaim and a moderate measure of commercial success is Harmonia Mundi's Heinrich Schütz: Kleine geistliche Konzerte & Symphoniae Sacrae featuring counter tenor René Jacobs, boy soprano Sebastian Hennig and a small, unnamed -- and very good -- chamber group led by William Christie. This disc itself was something of cause celèbre when it first appeared in 1982, and is recognized as one of the first discs to set a new standard in Baroque period performance, and thus, a foundation stone that helped build the house of Harmonia Mundi. Here it appears for the first time at a reduced price in HMU's Musique d'abord series, perhaps with the notion that listeners with guilty feelings about the lack of Schütz in their musical diet might take the risk at a lower cost, especially given the excellent performers involved, Christophe Coin and Konrad Junghänel among them.
Hennig was an excellent boy soprano and his voice meshes well with that of the young Jacobs. This is a very early album for everyone involved, and it shows in the continuo realization, which is invariably plain sounding and almost devoid of ornamentation. The two fiddles played by Mihoko Kimura and Staas Swierstra mesh nicely, but are only sparingly employed. The recording is not of Harmonia Mundi's best, as it has a flat dynamic, is not very loud, and is a little hissy. But the weakest element is the music; drawn from Schütz's short sacred concertos and his sacred symphonies, both being motet-like forerunners of the German sacred cantata, all of these pieces sound the same, with the voices flowing in dutiful, well-harmonized counterpoint over a well-matched continuo line. The 13 pieces included are uniformly wide-eyed, religiose, purposeful, and dull. While there are many treasures in Harmonia Mundi's back catalog that are well worth savoring, Heinrich Schütz: Kleine geistliche Konzerte & Symphoniae Sacrae is a relic that belongs most to Schütz's fanatical following and to the cobwebs. ~ Uncle Dave Lewis, All Music Guide