Almost exactly 300 years of musical history separate Heinrich Schutz from Igor Stravinsky. Yet the German kapellmeister who strove to transcend the austerity of 16th-century Protestant church music, and the cosmopolitan cultural magpie who unswervingly absorbed what he needed from the past and made it his own, proved to be perfect partners in this programme. Conducted by Philippe Herreweghe, it brought together the choir he founded 30 years ago - the Collegium Vocale Gent - and the finest of current modern-music groups, the Ensemble Modern.
The Ensemble were surplus to requirements in the Schutz: the Musikalische Exequien (1636), his elaborate, achingly expressive funerary triptych, needs only a group of continuo instruments to support its closely woven textures. Herreweghe's minimalist conducting - the barest indications of pulse, the occasional shrugging emphasis, but often just eagle-eyed encouragement - was still capable of shaping such music with consummate skill. Every phrase was unselfconsciously moulded and, with each voice allowed to retain its own personal timbre, there was no suggestion of bland uniformity. The polyphonic intricacies were brought thrillingly alive, whether in the massive opening concerto, which sets the words of the German funeral mass as a sequence of calls and responses between a group of soloists and the main choir or the extraordinary final chorus, in which the Nunc Dimittis is combined with extracts from the Book of Revelation.
In many ways Stravinsky's Mass, from the 1940s, is more austere than anything in the Schutz. There's not a wasted note: the text is delivered in an almost matter-of-fact way, and the quintets of woodwind and brass instruments supply punctuation rather than decoration. Though lines were submerged on occasion - women were used for the soprano parts where Stravinsky suggested boys, sacrificing pungency in the lower registers - Herreweghe's account was a model of directness.
The insistent delivery of the Gloria harked back to the Russian primitivism of Les Noces, while the Agnus Dei had a matter-of-fact simplicity. Before it, the Ensemble wind gave a wonderfully unbuttoned performance of Stravinsky's Octet, treating it as real chamber music. The players listened carefully to each other, minting fresh ideas as they went along, for the perfect extrovert contrast to the intensely serious works on either side.
