Beaux Arts Nâ°327 Septembre 2011

Thoughtful, sensitive playing in slow movements, lively tempi in allegros, characteristic musicianship plus spontaneity combine to make these recordings highly recommendable throughout…

Tempered by Rimsky-Korsakov’s orientalism and Tchaikovsky’s eclectic refinement, Anton Arensky’s pristine, elevated style is nowhere more arresting than in his two splendid piano trios. These richly sonorous, predominantly elegiac compositions are magnificently played by the Beaux Arts Trio. Recorded sound is of demonstration quality, and these sensational accounts deserve the strongest conceivable recommendation.

The Beaux Arts, late 1980s-style, is recognizably the same creature as it was at the start of the decade, or even two decades ago. The fingers of Menahem Pressler still twinkle away, the violin and cello exchange angst for mischief in volatile and ebullient alternation. The most obvious comparison for their latest release is the identical Dvorak/Mendelssohn coupling of 1980 on Pearl. Then Daniel Guilet was the violinist, and his comparatively small voice and old-style sweetness make their mark: this Dvorak is a small-scale, kid-glove performance, with the gentle acoustic recessing the violin even further and softening the high-spirited Dumka episodes.

As a glance at the above will show, this is not the old Beaux Arts version, for whose restoration I made a plea two years ago, but a new digital account recorded with their new cellist, Peter Wiley and in a different acoustic The Maltings, Snape. In their old version they omitted the fugue (Var. 8), a practice sanctioned by the score (the Borodin on Chandos curiously enough, cut out the variation preceding it) but this time round the players restore it. However, they do make the traditional cut in the finale (bar 9 of page 86 to bar 4 of page 102 Eulenburg score).

Since the Beaux Arts Trio last recorded Beethoven's Triple Concerto in 1977 two of its personnel have changed, with Ida Kavafian and Peter Wiley taking over from Isidore Cohen and Bernard Greenhouse. That leaves Menahem Pressler, now in his seventies, as the ever-lively survivor. Not only does Pressler's playing sparkle even more brightly in the concerto than before, he is an inspired protagonist in the Choral Fantasia, setting the pattern of joyfulness in this performance from his opening improvisation-like solo onwards. The other prime mover is Kurt Masur, who has rarely conducted more electrifying Beethoven performances on disc.