First, the new arrivals—and there are considerable differences between the two. In what they find space for, the Novalis team are the more generous, i.e. they include several repeats omitted by their Ex Libris rivals as well as the independent Notturno in E flat and the Sonata Movement in B flat also found in the 1986 Beaux Arts/Philips CD box. Neither company's engineering is likely to win it an Oscar. For though Novalis give us clarity and brightness I was decidedly unhappy about the forwardness of the piano and the metallic edge it acquires above a certain dynamic level. From Ex Libris we get agreeable warmth and mellowness, but it's all a bit close and plummy. The differences in sound in some strange way reflect each team's musical approach. The German pianist, Oppitz, and his Russian violinist and cellist, Sitkovetsky and Geringas, are the more objectively classical. The Viennese Badura-Skoda and Schneiderhan, with the Russian cellist, Pergamenschikov, make the music very much more their own. And I'm sure all this stems basically from the artistic personalities of the two pianists involved. Oppitz emerges as a highly disciplined, somewhat assertive German, Badura-Skoda as a more impressionably romantic Austrian.
Obviously there are losses and gains in both approaches. I certainly thought the rhythmic precision of Oppitz's team in the slow movement of the E flat Trio conveyed more of the music's Winterreise-like inexorability. But on reaching the finale of this work I was weary enough to find its lengthy repetitions anything but heavenly from Oppitz (too insistent in some of the keyboard figuration) and his colleagues, whereas from Badura-Skoda's team, so impassioned in the whirlwind climaxes of the second subject, I was swept along in the music's own tide, and would not have sacrificed a single note. Let me say at once that I constantly enjoyed Geringas's lovely tone and musical finesse, and much from Sitkovetsky too. In company with Badura-Skoda I think both could have evoked just as Viennese a Schubert as Schneiderhan and Pergamenschikov. But with Oppitz, clear-cut and positive as he is, I don't think they always manage to cross the German frontier. Nearly always the phrasing of the Ex Libris team is just that little more spontaneously ingratiating, more personal, more characterful.
I need hardly remind readers that in the sphere of CD there is powerful competition for Oppitz's team, both from the warmly recorded, serious-minded Borodins on Chandos (who include no extras) and the more crystalline Beaux Arts Trio. Though RG found the Beaux Arts' later performances (with Isidore Cohen as violinist) less sparkling than the older (1967) LP ones (with Daniel Guilet) I'm bound to say that I prefer certain modifications in the later performances—such as the slightly less jaunty step in the opening movement of the B flat Trio, and their more flowing second movement in the same work. What with the B flat Sonata Movement as well as the Notturno as extras they still remain my CD favourites.
For those only concerned with LP, it's not quite so easy to make a clear-cut choice between the Beaux Arts' two separate records of 1967 and the new two-LP Badura-Skoda album, though I'm bound to say that the old Philips recording is now beginning to betray signs of age in limited bloom, or presence, or whatever you like to call it. As I've just indicated, I don't think an Andante un poco moto should be quite as slow as the Beaux Arts made it, in the B flat Trio, in 1967. Conversely, some Schubertians may also prefer a slightly more measured tread than they offer elsewhere. but both teams, in their different ways, reveal an endearingly human Schubert, and I'd be happy enough with either—despite less than top-class sound.'