Concerto Palatino, Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe - Schütz: Opus Ultimum (2007)

If not texturally pared down, this is a journey where the 86-year-old Schütz withdraws from the world in a lexicon of finely drawn plainchants, antique modes, taut contrapuntal and antiphonal exchanges, melodic swathes and quicksilver declamations.
Herreweghe illuminates each verse with a considered and gentle ear for the progression from the 'statutes' of faith towards a sense of hope and salvation as we move towards a new Covenant, revealed in the final motet with its assuaging supplications and rock-like assurance.
Here we sense, above all, Schütz's mix of defiance and resignation for the gradual passing of a selfcontained sacred tradition threatened by radical worldly things (like operas).
Collegium Vocale relish Schütz's introspection and easy exchange between solo and tutti sections, which allow the inspired rhetorical mood-changes to reveal each marked-out image ('when thou shalt enlarge my heart' at the end in the second motet is dealt a moment of special attention as it moves towards a conclusion in rapt homage to Monteverdi). Herreweghe's performances are generally outstanding in their attention to detail: some might quibble that the inner tutti voices occasionally lack focus and energy, but this is a performance where Schütz's seasoned harmonic shifts are treated as pure music and not over-accentuated by rhetorical zeal: the music doesn't need it. Can a greater work have been completed by an octogenarian? This recording urges us, very persuasively, to think perhaps not.