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Fanfare Magazine: 43:1 (09-10/2019) 
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Carus
CAR83277



Code-barres / Barcode : 4009350832770

Reviewer: J. F. Weber

Volume 19 brings us close to the end of Carus’s project of recording its newly published Schütz Edition. It is the first issue focused on music not published by the composer in his lifetime. After op. 1, the Italian madrigals, the other books, op. 2 to op. 13, were all devoted to sacred music. When Werner Bittinger published his catalog, Schütz-Werke-Verzeichnis, in 1960, he numbered the individual works in these books from 1 to 431, leaving room among them for unpublished pieces, both sacred and secular. Between op. 1 and op. 2, for example, he listed two wedding motets (SWV 20 and 21), both on the disc under review. From 432 to 494 the catalog listed other sacred and secular pieces, including op. Ultimum. (Nine more pieces have been added to the catalog since 1960.) A few of them appeared as fillers on six of Rademann’s previous discs. The first attempt to record a collection devoted solely to these miscellaneous pieces was made in 1971 by Dietrich Knothe (Fanfare 6:2), followed by Konrad Junghänel and Heinz Hennig (16:5); Manfred Cordes (21:6) is the most recent. Six of Knothe’s selections are heard here, three of Hennig’s, and 11 of Cordes’s.

This collection has two recorded premieres, SWV 459 and SWV 474. Of the rest, SWV 498 has been recorded only by Howard Arman (18:6) and SWV 339 most recently by Musicalisches Compagney (11:2). The remaining 11 works are all on the Cordes disc, but there are at most four other recordings of these pieces. Rademann begins with music for Schütz’s brother’s wedding in 1619 (SWV 48), revised as SWV 412 in the Symphoniae Sacrae III, a firmer rendition than the similar Cordes interpretation. It is followed by the record premiere of SWV 459 for an unknown occasion, though the gospel text (“Say to the guests, come to the wedding”) seems to refer to another occasion like the first. Three more weddings occasioned SWV 20 for his friend Joseph Avenarius, SWV 21 for Michael Thomas (both in 1618, always recorded as a pair, here for the fourth time), and SWV 96 for the marriage of Princess Sophie-Eleanore of Saxony to the Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt in 1627. The last is a brief dancelike duet for alto and tenor that gets a stronger performance under Rademann than the similar Cordes version. SWV 453 is a wedding motet for an unknown occasion. SWV 498 also seems to mark a wedding, while SWV 434 marks the engagement of Magdalena Sibylla of Saxony to Friedrich Wilhelm of Saxony-Altenburg. The premiere SWV 474 is a concerto, one of the composer’s earliest known works, for it dates from Cassel in 1608. Five settings of the celebrated poet Martin Opitz are heard, including SWV 451 and 452, also always recorded as a pair, here for the fourth time; these two and SWV 441 are based on the Song of Songs, while SWV 438 and 460 are original. These five pieces are the most popular works on this disc, all five recorded as a group by Gregg Smith and Cordes.

This collection makes a fine addition to the recorded Carus Edition. Along with the forthcoming collection of miscellaneous sacred works, it will present nearly all the surviving music of the greatest German composer of the 17th century.

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