Guitar versions of Schubert’s song-cycle are certainly worth experimenting with for the reasons expounded in the notes to this new version and those accompanying the older performance, once on EMI, now on Berlin Classics. They are never likely to share the popularity of Schubert’s original, but certainly caress the ear by virtue of the intimacy achieved between singer and player(s).

On this Etcetera issue Maarten Koningsberger is a sympathetic and well-tutored Schubert interpreter with a pleasing, flexible voice, expressively used. Although there is a wealth of baritone talent available, Koningsberger makes his own, distinctive mark in his thoughtful, deeply felt exposition.

I am no guitar specialist, but anyone hearing these discs will agree that the two instruments employed here and the arrangement itself are seldom as convincing or cogent as that of Konrad Ragössnig’s playing or John Duarte arrangement of the keyboard part on the 24-year-old rival. On the newcomer, the results are often etiolated and/or anonymous; on the older version the ear is constantly delighted by the way the single guitar makes its individual mark.

To cite one just example, in ‘Die liebe farbe’, the oft-repeated note is very hard to hear on the new disc, while on the old it is almost as prominent as it would be on the piano. Peter Schreier is more successful in almost every way in his interpretation, possessing a better line and a greater variety of declamation. He and Ragössnig, as recorded, sound both more at one and more inward in their reading. Returning to them again, I felt, even more than before, that Schubert would surely have congratulated them on their advocacy; not so with the Etcetera issue.

The Arpeggione, on the second CD, fares far better. Here the two guitarists convincingly show that this music suits their instruments as well as, if not better than, it does the cello/piano alternative, and they execute it superbly. This arrangement deserves greater currency.