Heifetz is very much in the driving seat in this performance of the Quintet, which I would describe as essentially 'new world' as against the old world Schubert recently given us by Casals and his Prades Festival colleagues (Philips). In all four movements tempo is markedly faster, impulse more urgent, accentuation more robust and dynamic contrast more extreme. Boldly arresting as it all is, I missed a certain mellowness—and in the slow movement a quality of spirituality too—distinguishing the Prades performance despite those passing flaws noted by SJ last November. I could also have done without some of Heifetz's portamentos. Individually it is Piatigorsky's sumptuous cello that gives me the greatest joy. The digitally remastered CD comes up full, forward and clear even if the minimizing of surface hiss has removed some of the old, cushioning reverberance too.
When writing the String Trio in B flat Schubert was still only 17: rather than pre-echoing the individual voice to come, the music reminds us of his strict classical training at Vienna's Konvikt School. I thought the tempo too fast for the Andante to contrast it enough with the following Minuet. But how good to have the work on CD from three such legendary giants. The Bach Sinfonias are in fact Three-Part Inventions originally written for keyboard: we're told these three artists suddenly realized how well the texture would transfer to their own instruments without a note's alteration. Again, as if fearing sentimentality like the plague, they play the second of the three rather too fast to make it sound ''positively steeped in anguish'', as Spitta put it. But the last really does emerge like a spirited episode from one of the Brandenburgs, as the booklet leads us to expect. The disc ends with a juicily plangent 1946 Ave Maria from Heifetz and his loyal old partner, Emanuel Bay.'