MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Schutz: Christmas Story (with Praetorius: Motets)

"If Schutz's Christmas Story is your quarry, then this performance by the Taverner Consort, Choir and Players must be considered very carefully indeed. Measured by the criterion of its superb instrumental playing, it is far and away the best version available on record. On other counts, however, Parrott's reading is closely rivalled by Louis Devos's equally strong interpretation on Erato/ RCA, which is also played on authentic instruments. After much vacillation, my own preference falls very marginally in Devos's favour; but this really is a matter of taste.

Devos has the benefit of an excellent Evangelist in the person of Kurt Widmer, whose lively and impeccable enunciation of the German words simply cannot be matched even by the stylish singing of Nigel Rogers. In the Taverner version, Emma Kirkby is radiant in the role of the Angel, David Thomas imperious as Herod in the sixth intermedium but for the remaining solo sections Devos's choice of richer voices, more forwardly placed than Parrott's, has the edge. Parrott's choir for the opening and closing choruses is tiny by comparison with the robust Brussels Scola Cantorum, and it's the Belgians who to my mind communicate more vividly the joy and rhythmic energy of the wonderful conclusion. Perhaps most important, Devos makes more of a story out of the work, encouraging consistently animated delivery from his singers, and opting for a wider range of moods and speeds.

Listen beyond the Christmas Story itself, however, and the balance swings significantly towards Parrott. Michael Praetorius may not be the most skilled or intellectually satisfying composer of his age, but few can match his sense of the bizarre.

The four Christmas motets chosen by Parrott, which incidentally extend the playing time to a generous 60 minutes, are of mammoth proportions: multiple choirs vie with a deliciously varied selection of instruments, including a manic pair of cornetts in Wachet auf and, in the vast In dulci jubilo, a blaring chorus of trumpets and drums richly supported by further layers of viols, cornetts and sackbuts. If the music itself is pretty basic, the sheer noise is utterly spectacular. Beside it, the three motets Schutz motets that Devos selects as his fine but much shorter complement to the Christmas Story seem pale indeed." Gramophone