Long the Cinderella work of Schubert’s miraculous final year, the E flat Mass is now acknowledged as a powerful masterpiece that mingles liturgical grandeur with the composer’s own subjective Romanticism. The apocalyptic Sanctus, with its daring harmonic shifts and heaven-storming crescendi, is a musical counterpart to Turner’s molten canvases, while the Agnus Dei has a violent, contorted anguish unmatched in a setting of this text. The least personal, and most problematic, sections of the Mass are the monumental set-piece fugues at the end of the Gloria and Credo, where Schubert ostentatiously displays his contrapuntal credentials, probably with an eye on an official church appointment. At the worthy tempi prevalent 20 and more years ago, these could seem interminable, and were often cut. Happily, each of the conductors on these new recordings – an unprecedented glut – ensures that the fugues have a strong rhythmic propulsion and plenty of light and shade. On all three the choral singing is firm and sensitive, though on Corboz’s live recording, clarity (especially among the lower voices) is slightly compromised by the resonant acoustic of the Lausanne Salle Métropole. Hickox chooses the broadest tempi, balancing dignity and vitality, and building thrillingly to the climaxes. In Corboz’s hands the fugues are almost skittish, with the Gloria’s “Cum Sancto Spiritu” beginning as if on tiptoe.

Elsewhere though, Corboz’s direction is rather less compelling. In the Kyrie he ignores Schubert’s quasi allegretto direction and gives the music a burdened tramp that tends to get slower and more burdened as it proceeds. Hickox, at a slightly more mobile tempo, combines gravitas with a Schubertian lyrical ease, while Morten Schuldt-Jensen’s attractive Naxos version is the swiftest and lightest, with a suggestion of a celestial waltz. At the start of the Gloria Corboz stresses Schubert’s moderato e maestoso qualification but fails to lift the rhythms. The result is plodding and earthbound, with none of the exhilaration caught by the other two conductors. Nor was I convinced by the gear changes in the “Domine Deus” and, especially, the Agnus Dei, where Corboz slows to adagissimo for the hushed pleas of “Miserere” and then lunges forward again. Both Hickox and Schuldt-Jensen manage their tempo fluctuations far more naturally.

Corboz’s solo singers are decent, no more, in the Benedictus (the alto can be intrusively tremulous), while in the “Et incarnatus est”, set as a round, the two tenors outgun the rather fragile soprano. The soloists are also a drawback in the otherwise fresh, up-tempo – and, where needed, amply dramatic – performance from Schuldt-Jensen. Here the cello melody of the “Et incarnatus est” has a lovely, subtle lilt, only for the magic to be dissipated by the raw-toned tenors.

Turn to Hickox and you’ll hear how this heavenly music should sound, with the three soloists (Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist – an ideally matched tenor pairing – and soprano Susan Gritton) singing with pure tone and wondering tenderness. Hickox scores, too, with his extra choral firepower at climaxes, and the wonderfully pungent sonorities of Collegium Musicum 90, whether in the dry, fearful rattle of period timpani in the Credo, the lovely “woody” oboe and clarinet in the “Et incarnatus est” or the steely, scything trumpets in the Agnus Dei. With the bonus of the teenage Schubert’s stark setting of part of the Stabat mater, the Naxos recording can be recommended to bargain-hunters. But the Chandos disc is worth the extra outlay, a version of this still under-appreciated masterpiece to rival the rather darker, more disturbing 1997 performance from Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Elatus, 5/97R).