The back cover of the booklet accompanying this recording states that “Schütz would never have heard his music performed by forces such as these and on such a scale – surely he would have been a strong advocate of this outstanding aural experience”. While very often such advertising “blurbs” are a convenient exaggeration, I cannot help in this case but think that this is the truth.

One is quite simply struck dumb by both the massiveness of the sonority of the NYCGB and its astounding agility – there is never any sense that Mike Brewer’s clearly very deep understanding of Schütz’s musical rhetoric is compromised by having to work with such vast forces (140 voices!). Quite the opposite – there is a feeling that such a large group is absolutely capable of vast extremes of dynamics and articulation: ppp is never a problem for a large, well trained choir, and the lightly tripping phrasing of some of Schütz’s more dance-like sections, as for example Ich weiss, dass mein Erlöser lebt, have to be heard to be believed. There is at work here an amazing sense of choral discipline (only the opening of the Deutsches Magnificat seems to be a very slight exception to the general perfection of tuning and blend) combined with a genuinely exultant joy.

As if this were not enough, these uplifting performances of Schütz’s choral music are interspersed with organ music by Samuel Scheidt, beautifully played by John Kitchen. Most highly recommended, and not only to admirers of Schütz. IVAN MOODY