This is the Viennese Strauss that got away. More’s the pity, judging from this impressive collection of motets and a Mass setting which, if not exactly dazzling, gives us reason enough to be thankful that Christoph Strauss kept his chin up after Emperor Ferdinand II unaccountably replaced him as Court Kapellmeister in 1619. Strauss came from good Viennese musical stock, and this is reflected both in his effortlessly natural control of contrapuntal practices and an easy awareness of both the relatively smooth ‘old’ style and the kaleidoscopic contrast and ‘baroque-isms’ of early-seventeenth-century Venice. This disc, from Harmonia Mundi’s Dokumenta series, neatly frames one of Strauss’s most forward-looking Masses, published in 1631 just after the composer’s death, with motets from a comprehensive set of 36 for five to ten voices which appeared nearly 20 years earlier. The first group contains a wonderfully doleful ‘Expectans’, whose seamless longing is underpinned by six trombones. The role of the instruments within the choral texture is governed largely according to the practice espoused by Praetorius, where individuals emerge within choirs of cleverly differentiated registers.
Concerto Palatino is well known to aficionados of this repertoire as an early brass ensemble of exemplary credentials, though the singers are neither as consistent nor as colourfully represented as the instrumentalists. In ‘Deus laudem’, the vocal quality is undistinguished, the tenors especially searing and disagreeably penetrating; there is little of the same homogeneous glow which irradiates the splendid Harmonia Mundi discs of Rosenmuller Vespers (2/97) and Schutz’s Psalmen Davids (11/98), and a recent disc of Biber and Muffat (3/99), all of which see Concerto Palatino accompanied by Cantus Colln. Even so, the impressively evolving ‘Amen dico vobis’ and the madrigalian ‘Anima mea cessa’ are well served and demonstrate Strauss’s most intensely felt expression. The self-consciously entitled Missa Maria Concertata is a complex polychoral work in the a la mode Venetian vein (probably composed when Strauss was Kapellmeister at the acoustically imposing Stefansdom) which contains some meticulously-scored and admirably flexible dispositions of instruments and voices – solo and ripieno – of a sonorous kind which will win many friends. In truth, this music is usually far better than worthy (the high cornett-playing brings the Sanctus out in happy relief, and there is real contrapuntal flair in the Credo), but rarely exceptional. With a better vocal consort, one might have been persuaded that this early example of the festive Viennese Mass – with a lineage leading to Haydn and beyond – is more than a mere curiosity. Some fine motets, but overall a mixed success.'