How good that both these much loved Trouts are now available on CD. In sound both come up remarkably well, particularly the more recent Philips recording. The Beaux Arts team are perhaps also more traditional in choice of tempo. But it's Curzon and members of the Vienna Octet who remain my favourites—for their tautly sprung rhythm, their smiling charm and above all, their immediacy. In their own seeming delight in making music together, Curzon and his colleagues convey all the young Schubert's unalloyed happiness on that never-to-be-forgotten walking tour with Vogl in the summer of 1819. (Never mind if the Scherzo is just a bit snatched, and its Landler-like trio section questionably slow.)
Whereas the three best newer Trouts—with Brendel (Philips), Schiff (Decca) and Richter (EMI) at the piano—include no extras, these two reissues are remarkably generous in playing time. On the Decca we're given another spontaneously Viennese performance of Death and the Maiden: that's the only way I can describe it in a nutshell in comparison with the more searchingly sustained old Busch performance that I dug out for comparison (EMI—LP only). The Beaux Arts team desert Schubert for Beethoven—the Beethoven of the Ghost, in which they risk a slower tempo for the eerie central Largo assai than I've ever heard from any rival team. It comes from their all-embracing 1983 LP set of Beethoven's complete works for piano trio (seven records in all). Stephen Plaistow preferred their keener 1960s Philips version (still available on a single LP). But it's a very gripping Ghost all the same.'