Franz's finest

Schubert: Secular Choral Music. Arnold Schoenberg Choir/Erwin Ortner. (Teldec, seven CDs)

Schubert died at 31 but his output still extended to over 900 works, many of them still rarely performed and little-known. Adopting a broad interpretation of the designation "secular", the Arnold Schoenberg Choir manages to bring together over 130 works in a new seven-CD collection on Teldec. It needs to be stated straight away that this choral music, much of it piano-accompanied, sets lower targets than the songs for solo voice. Much of it is social music, simply written, and with the limitations of specific performers in mind. In some of the male voice pieces about love or the hunt, you can almost smell the tobacco smoke and the beer waiting on the table while the singing goes on. That said, with a genius of the calibre of Schubert there was no knowing when he might be fired to deliver of his finest. It's with some of the finest that the new set begins - the sombre imagery of the string-accompanied (no violins!) Goethe setting, Gesang Der Geister Uber Den Wassern, a metaphorical comparison of man's soul with water. Under the guidance of their founding conductor, Erwin Ortner, the youthful singers of Vienna's Arnold Schoenberg Choir are flexible and responsive. The voices are agile, the style fresh, utterly modern, virtually wobble-free, and with a musical focus that remains remarkably sharp and consistent. The vast undertaking seems to have been well conceived on all levels. Pianists of the standing of Andras Schiff and Andreas Staier are among the accompanists, and the documentation (over 300 pages of texts, translations and essays) is thorough and informative. In short, a centenary celebration that does the composer proud.