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

A psycho-morality play of modern life, written and produced by Louis MacNeice
(Repeat of yesterday's broadcast)

Two talks by Professor Sir Cyril Burt.

for piano played by Mewton-Wood
The ingenuity of this work of the foremost modern German composer, written in America during the war and first played in England last year by Noel Mewton-Wood, has evoked comparisons with Bach's "Forty-Eight". It displays the same contrapuntal command as Bach's masterpiece, though Hindemith's writing, in a modern keyboard style, is consistently in three parts. The work bears the explicit sub-title "Studies in Counterpoint, Tonal organisation and Piano-playing". Twelve 'strict' fugues, following a novel tonal relationship, are linked by interludes and framed by a prelude and a postlude. The virtuoso feats in counterpoint present an almost mathematical complexity, among them the device whereby the postlude is an exact 'mirrored' inversion of the prelude. The work, however, is not merely an exercise in technique, for Hindemith brings to the solution of such astonishing technical problems a sense of primitive grace and a strength of design peculiar to himself.

A new play in verse by L.A.G. Strong, with music specially composed by Elizabeth Poston and conducted by Maurice Mile

Those taking part include Pauline Letts, Helen Spalding, Anne Cullen, Lorna Davis, L.A.G. Strong, and Robert Irwin

Phllharmonia String Quartet: Henry Holst (violin), Ernest Element (violin), Herbert Downes (viola), Anthony Pini (cello) with Watson Forbes (viola) and John Moore (cello)

Dilys Powell compares the national and individual characteristics of some of the leading directors in Europe and America

sung by Rene Soames (tenor) accompanied by Diana Poulton (lute)