CLASSICAL

Schubert: "Symphonies 3 and 8" DG Dial-a-track code: 1861

The bicentenary celebrations are already adding to the abundance of Schubert on CD. Few of the recordings flooding the market, however, are likely to stir up such strong feelings as Carlos Kleiber's 1978 recordings of the Third and Eighth (Unfinished) Symphonies. The playing of the Vienna Philharmonic is lithe and lean, qualities highlighted in the bright new "Originals" series transfer.

The Third Symphony is sharply-etched, with a quick tilt at the Allegretto that's as extreme as anything you're ever likely to encounter in this movement. In the Unfinished, Kleiber acknowledges the darker side of the music in a performance that's both highly dramatic and intensely lyrical.

Schubert: "Psalms And Partsongs" Collins Classics Dial-a-track code: 1971

Did you know that, at the end of his life, Schubert set Psalm 92 in Hebrew, for the cantor of a synagogue in Vienna? You can find the piece on a new collection of psalms and part songs by the BBC Singers under Jane Glover. Most of the music here is social in intent and domestic in scale, though there are some larger pieces too, notably the late, sombre setting of Goethe's Gesang de Geister uben den Wassern for eight-part men's chorus and strings. Glover gets much firm and beautiful singing from her choir, achieved, unfortunately, at the expense of rhythmic life and a failure of obvious engagement with the texts.

"Schoenberg in Hollywood" Decca Dial-a-track code: 2081

The tonal music of Schoenberg's later years has been consigned to a rarely-visited limbo. Decca's enterprising "Entartete Musik" series (focusing on music suppressed by the Third Reich) has now brought together three of the less familiar pieces of Schoenberg's US exile, the Suite in G for strings (written for a student orchestra), the Variations Op. 43 (originally intended to give wind bands "something better to play"), and the Chamber Symphony No 2 (begun in 1906 and worked at only fit fully between then and its completion in 1939). John Mauceri's dryly sympathetic performances with Berlin's Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester usefully illuminate a fascinating sidelight of musical history.