This concert features two rarely heard choral masterpieces. Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht sets a dramatic poem by Goethe to music of wonderful freshness and vitality. The orchestration has the same quicksilver brilliance that we find in his Midsummer Night’s Dream music and the choral parts are thrilling and highly dramatic in effect. Berlioz described this magnificent work as “a masterpiece of Romanticism”.

Schubert’s Mass in E flat was composed in 1827 not long before his untimely death. It is a mass setting of exceptional richness and splendour, very much in the romantic spirit. The music has the same uplifting exuberance that we find in his last Symphony and also a sumptuous grandeur which seems to anticipate the music of Wagner.

Tickets: £18, £15, £12