While clarinettists and violinists – horn players, too – may disagree, Schubert’s hedonistic Octet has always seemed to me virtually fail-safe. I can’t remember a performance, either live or recorded, that I haven’t enjoyed. The line-up on this new disc promises excellence, and that’s exactly what you get. Combining vivid individual character with a natural sense of give and take, the Berlin Philharmonic players balance delight in the moment with a feeling for long-range structure. And as you might guess, where a smooth tutti blend is needed, the Berliners are second to none. Both the first and last movements bristle with energy – effortless virtuosity, too, in the finale’s fiendishly difficult sallies for violin and clarinet. But the Berliners are always happy to bend the pulse in response to the melodic and harmonic flux, as when violin and cello momentarily linger on the yearning appoggiaturas near the start of the first movement’s development (from 8'34"). They also scrupulously observe Schubert’s detailed dynamics, including his many demands for pp, even ppp. The first movement’s soft horn envoi, sounding as if from afar, is as haunting as I always hope, the swell and ebb of tone perfectly controlled by Andrej Žust.

Amid the exuberance and sense of selfless shared enjoyment, the players seize every opportunity for lyrical eloquence: most obviously in the Adagio (the clarinet solo dreamily floated by Wenzel Fuchs), but also in the fourth-movement variations and the Minuet, where Schubert puts a wistful Romantic gloss on the Classical dance. In the fourth movement I specially savoured the duet between singing horn and delicately cavorting violin, the unusually agitated fifth variation – a Schubertian night-ride – and the exquisite tenderness of the penultimate variation, where the jaunty theme dissolves into poetic meditation. The Berliners are also keenly alive to the moments of darkness and anxiety that fleetingly cloud Schubert’s idyll, whether in the mounting tension of the Adagio’s coda – here as disturbing as in any performance I know – or the shudders and louring crescendos at the opening of the finale, where you’re uncommonly aware of the growling double bass underpinning the ensemble.

In sum, the Berliners not only don’t put a foot wrong but get everything resoundingly right. Fine competing performances of the Octet abound, of course. A personal shortlist would include the Vienna Octet, 1990 vintage, with those distinctively mellow Viennese sonorities (Decca, 2/93), the Nash Ensemble (Philips, 10/94) and the more expansive Mullova Octet (Onyx, 2/06). Using period instruments, Isabelle Faust and friends (Harmonia Mundi, 7/18) find intriguing colours (including, where apt, a touch of rustic rawness) in a performance of rare intimacy and transparency of texture. That the Berliners, marrying esprit de corps and individual flair, can stand happily in this company is tribute enough.