Founded over 60 years ago by Menahem Pressler, Daniel Guilet and Bernard Greenhouse, the Beaux Arts Trio performed and recorded exclusively for Philips Classics until 1995. Through the years, the Trio has maintained its freshness and preserved its distinctive musical heritage while the membership has changed. The Beaux Arts Trio is considered by many as having set the standard for performance of piano trio literature for all future generations. These three boxes offer a more accessible way to enjoy their complete cycles of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn piano trios, previously collected together in Decca’s 60-CD Complete Philips Recordings.
Not among his best known music, Wolfgang Mozart’s Trios for violin, cello and piano have a lighter feel than his more serious chamber pieces, say the K. 515 String Quintet or the “Dissonant” Quartet. They are more charming than profound, so I’ve always paid them much less attention than his quintets, quartets and violin sonatas, something which I also think true of many listeners. This superb release from Augustin Dumay (violin), Maria Pires (piano) and Jian Wang (cello) helps show their relative obscurity is partly caused by disappointing performances, because I very much enjoyed the three the ensemble include in this disc.
This Collection of Mozart fetaures some of the leading period-instrument ensembles and spans the oeuvre of Mozart's works. Included excellent readings of the 'Prague' Symphony and the Requiem.
Long recognized as the leading piano trio in a competitive field, the Beaux Arts Trio is known for precise, straightforward performances and recordings of everything in the standard Central European trio literature.
Mozart’s great musical love was opera. This rather peremptory statement is also unquestionable. He confessed to his father that he would “cry” out of envy when he listened to an opera written by somebody else. Yet, the problem was that – at his time just as today – operas were very expensive, and one had to have an established fame and a foothold in the world of music in order to be commissioned one.
The trio on this dics is chamber music performance at its highest level of enjoyment. Listening to the CD, you get an impression of three great friends having a most delightful conversation, elegant and graceful. The recorded sound is first rate. You hear all the details of instruments being played and also the acoustic features of the room in which they performed. It is interesting to compare this one with a Mozart trio played by Dumay, Wang and Pires, which features more modern recorded sound and the same delight in the musicans playing the music together. The duos on this CD are equally enjoyable. I particularly like the nostalgically nasal yet lush tone of the viola Kashkashian played.
Anne-Sophie Mutter is joined in by André Previn and cellist Daniel Müller-Schott for these performances of the finest of Mozart's Piano Trios, filmed in Mantua's magnificent 18th-century Teatro Bibiena. "The outstanding musicians making music in an affectionate and elegant way" (International Record Review). "Mutter's warm tone and her subtle gradations of vibrato are a constant pleasure" (BBC Music Magazine).
I really love the piano trio,” says Aki Takase, with a passion that mirrors her playing. “But not the old idea, where the pianist is king, and the bassist and the drummer are just sidemen. We are equal.” Indeed, all three musicians are in focus in the trio AUGE: bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener are among the most original virtuosos of their instruments…”