BBC Singers
BBC Chorus
BBC Orchestra
Conducted by Leslie Woodgate

Gesang der Geister

Uber den Wassern Mass in A flat

These two examples of Schubert's choral music reveal tendencies, little suspected by lovers of his art. to both the operatic and the liturgical styles. The sombre setting for male voices, accompanied only by the lower strings. of Goethe's 'Gesang der Geister' is a powerful piece of descriptive music which might well pass for an operatic chorus. The A flat Mass, the fifth of Schubert's seven Masses, belongs to his best period - the year of the 'Trout' quintet - and follows the grand liturgical style of the period, tempered, however, by an unmistakably Schubertian sense of lyricism