Direct from the Royal Albert Hall

Felicity Palmer (soprano) Alfreda Hodgson (contralto) Peter Pears (tenor) Michael Rippon (bass-baritone)
BBC Singers, director John Poole
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, leader Raymond Ovens, conductor Christopher Seaman

Sir Lennox Berkeley says:
'Performances of Bach's B minor Mass and his two Passions must rank, for many of us, among our first great musical experiences. Indeed, most music-lovers have heard the Mass before experiencing many of the smaller, but no less beautiful, church cantatas that led up to it. It seems, too, that this great work was not actually conceived as a whole. Some of its movements - the Credo and Sanctus, for example - had been performed separately earlier.'