The Sixteen/ Christophers, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

A meeting of two masters

Selected pages from two great 17th-century music books were interwoven to make up this beautifully balanced programme by six soloists from The Sixteen, plus seven obbligato and continuo players from the Symphony of Harmony and Invention under the direction of Harry Christophers. One was Claudio Monteverdi's sumptuous eighth book of madrigals, the Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi, printed in 1638 at the height of his fame at the centre of musical life in Venice, but aimed at extracting still grander patronage from the Hapsburgs of Vienna.

The other was the second volume of Heinrich Schütz's Kleine Geistliche Concerte, published in Dresden in 1639 and reflecting in their relative austerity a cultural establishment diminished by the Thirty Years War. Both were important influences on György Kurtág, which was why this concert was presented as part of the ongoing Kurtág retrospective in the composer's presence.

The concert's first half was framed by two of Monteverdi's grandest binary-form numbers from the Canti guerrieri: the opening "Introduzione al ballo" with its florid compliments to the Hapsburgs; and the extraordinary Petrarch setting for six voices and ensemble "Hor che 'l ciel e la terra e 'l vento tace", which invokes the dead of night in a numb iteration of darkest minor key sonority, only to flare up in Monte- verdi's revolutionary agitated style at the thought of love itself as endless warfare.

The three Schütz items were almost chaste by comparison, highlighting his skill in conjuring musical continuities and forms out of the very stresses and rhythms of his chosen texts. Mark Wilde shaped the tenor and continuo setting of "O Jesu nomen dulce" with cool eloquence while sopranos Carolyn Sampson and Angharad Gruffydd-Jones intertwined serenely in "Verbum caro factum est". Only the tenor Andrew Carwood sounded a little rougher than his best in "O misericordissime Jesu".

Yet, by a nice twist of programming in the second half, Christophers contrived to reverse the contrast he seemed to have established. For between two of the more verbally pointed and lightsome-textured of the Canti amorosi, his Schütz group culminated in a "Veni, Sancte Spiritus" setting for four voices and continuo, opening with the most luxuriantly florid invocations – reminding us that Schütz may have first studied in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli, but that in 1628 he returned for a year to sit at the feet of the great Monteverdi himself.