The Annunciation and the Nativity in seventeeth-century German music: that could have been the title of this recording which sets Heinrich Schütz's celebrated 'Christmas Story' in perspective at the point of intersection between Schütz's great precursor, J.H. Schein, and his exceptionally gifted pupil Matthias Weckmann. Yet our perception should not be limited to the 'event' of the birth of Christ, which is undoubtedly the episode from scripture that has generated (especially in the twentieth century) the biggest avalanche of sentimentality, one with which we are all too familiar. And perhaps when we listen to this CD we should accompany it with an ever closer reading of the messianic text that constitutes its true theme: the words of the Prophecy of Isaiah. It is through and for this message that the works assembled here are so admirab
Schütz: Histoire De La Nativité
