I'm afraid the Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia Schubert disc just eclipse this new one but not by so very much. They seen to have a lightness of touch and fleetness that just pips the new one for me.
I don't feel the recording process does any good for Osborne as I have some recordings I made from Radio 3 of Osborne at The Wigmore Hall and he really is a different pianist with an audience in front of him. He just seems to come alive then. I found Arrau to be the same as I have got every record he made with Philips and with a few exceptions I find most of them to be a bit earthbound. Mind you when he was re recording the Beethoven Sonatas in the eighties in digital I started to hear that glorious tone of his that I heard live. I could never come to terms with the analogue recordings of his there really was something missing and there could also be a certain steeliness in the first Phillips set of the Beethoven Sonatas. And say all you like about Arrau but in front of an audience I have never ever heard a more ravishing piano tone.