Schütz's Beautiful 'Christmas Story'

The Christmas Story by Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is a glorious work from the early Baroque period, here, appropriately enough, performed by the Heinrich Schütz Choir and a starry group of singers and instrumentalists directed by Roger Norrington (now Sir Roger) in this 1970 recording.

Roger Norrington

The performance is graced by the presence of one of my favorite singers, tenor Ian Partridge, who assumes the important role of the Evangelist. His recitatives are interspersed with Intermedia, which are taken by characters from the familiar story - the angel and angelic host, the shepherds, the three kings, the high priests and scribes, and Herod.

Ian Partridge

Partridge came in for particular praise from the critics. Jeremy Noble wrote in The Gramophone that "his combination of simplicity, excellent German diction and sensitivity to every nuance of the biblical words is beyond praise."

Felicity Palmer

The Angel is Felicity Palmer, now Dame Felicity, who also is splendid. There are familiar names among the other roles as well. The shepherds are James Bowman, Derek McCullough and Philip Langridge; the wise men Langridge, Martyn Hill and Christopher Keyte, and Herod Eric Stannard. The instrumentalists include Robert Spencer on chittarone, and David Munrow and Philip Pickett on recorders, along with the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble.

The performance was - as were many records of the day - a combination of traditional and historically informed practices. Noble complained about revisions to the orchestration: "it seems odd to take one of the works for which Schütz has given us a specific instrumentation and then reorchestrate it (to a much greater extent than is implied in the informative sleeve-note, by the way)."

Heinrich Schütz

A quick note about the composer, edited from Wikipedia: "Heinrich Schütz was a German early Baroque composer and organist, generally regarded as the most important German composer before Johann Sebastian Bach and one of the most important composers of the 17th century. He is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Most of his surviving music was written for the Lutheran church, primarily for the Electoral Chapel in Dresden."

The sound from this disc is excellent.

LINK

Gramophone, October 1971