Mere weeks after the appearance of René Jacobs’s recording of Schubert’s Second and Third Symphonies with the B’Rock Orchestra, the same coupling turns up as the latest instalment in Heinz Holliger’s cycle with the Basel Chamber Orchestra. Comparing the two series as they have progressed has highlighted the differences between them. B’Rock play on period instruments, while the Basel ensemble opt for modern strings and wind but natural brass, with the greater blend this implies; Jacobs goes all out for drama while Holliger allows the contours of the music to reveal themselves in what might be considered a more organic way. Not that the Swiss players sound in any way reticent in comparison with the Belgians – these are thrusting performances, brimming with a palpable belief in the quality of the music and making their points with confidence and character. The evolving seriousness of the long opening movement of the Second Symphony, especially, is marshalled into an argument of powerful, gripping intensity.

Jacobs’s swift tempos enabled him to bring in both symphonies in rather under an hour. Holliger’s Second and Third come in almost exactly on the one-hour mark, and he fills in the remaining space on the disc with not one but two lesser-heard overtures: to the ‘magic opera’ Des Teufels Lustschloss (‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’), the strikingly assured product of the precocious 17-year-old, and to Alfonso und Estrella, composed at the cusp of Schubert’s maturity but, like Lustschloss, unperformed until many years after his death.

The Schubert cycles currently in progress, then, offer the nervy hyperactivity of Jacobs against Holliger’s more relaxed unfolding of Schubert’s symphonic canvases – not forgetting the fresh, affectionate Birmingham recordings under Edward Gardner. There is much rewarding music-making emerging in all three cycles but there is something especially satisfying in the performances of Holliger and his Basel ensemble.