One of the key German composers before Bach with more than 500 surviving individual pieces, Heinrich Schütz wrote mainly church music, and is credited with bringing the Italian style to Germany and continuing its evolution on from the Renaissance into the early Baroque. Although he lived most of his long life in Germany, in his twenties es Schütz made two visits to Venice. The fi rst was between 1609 and 1613 when he was taught by Giovanni Gabrieli; and the second in the late 1620s to meet and possibly study under Monteverdi. The two trips greatly infl uenced Schütz’s music as he absorbed and began to combine the ornate and theatrical Venetian an style with the more understated Lutheran tradition on in which he grew up. This album explores his solo cantatas alongside examples of the brilliant and virtuosic Venetian an style instrumental music.