Working with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe on Schubert has always been an inspiration to Claudio Abbado. That is so here, not only in the live recordings of the boyhood Mass in G and the late Tantum ergo, but in the lovely setting of Psalm 23, which like the Schumann item was also recorded in the Vienna Musikerein in the autumn of 1990 but at regular recording sessions. Abbado brings out the power of this very early setting of the Mass by the 18-year-old Schubert. Though at the start of the Kyrie, the hushed choral sound is rather cloudy, that changes the moment the members of the Vienna State Opera Chorus open out into a fortissimo. The choral sound then becomes bright, full and immediate. Much of the writing is straightforwardly homophonic, but under Abbado the remarkably compact settings of the Gloria and Credo have telling bite and urgency. Schubert pruned the words of the liturgy, particularly in the Credo, and it comes as quite a shock when the violent setting of ''Crucifixus'', with heavy running bass, leads with astonishing speed to the ''Et resurrexit''. The two longest movements are the last two, the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei, with soprano and tenor solos sung beautifully by Barbara Bonney and Jorge Antonio Pita.
With soloists alternating with chorus, homophonic writing predominates in the Tantum ergo too, the last of Schubert's six settings of this text, and again under Abbado there is no hint of stodginess. Unlike the recording of Psalm 23 which Sawallisch made for HMV (2/82––nla), this one replaces the original piano accompaniment with an effective orchestration. Abbado also opts for women soloists instead of men––two sopranos and two altos. In the Grove list of Schubert's works the piece is entered in the section for ''female or unspecified voices''. The result is totally different, less intimate and far more ethereal.
Schumann's Requiem fur Mignon, using words from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, makes an unexpected last item but a welcome one, when the performance has such fervour. Again, the cloudiness in gentle passages is immediately dispersed in the climaxes. The third of the six brief, linked sections, ''seht die machtigen Flugel doch an!'' (''Yet look at the strong wings!'') is made to lift superbly, with surging brass and harp writing to match the thrilling choral sound. Rather than any specific Christian feelings, the piece reflects Schumann's belief in art as the force which takes us to the stars, and the result is a work that is triumphant and celebratory rather than elegiac. This is an interesting and unusual collection presented in refreshing performances, and I am only sorry that it provides short measure. One could have done with more items of this quality.'