The great bonus with the Beaux Arts is their inclusion of the A major posthumous Trio, discovered in 1924 in Bonn, and now thought to be almost certainly the work of the young Brahms, and a companion piece to the B major Op. 8 Trio. The Israel Piano Trio on CRD fill out their fourth side with the Schumann Op. 63; the Borodin on Chandos use up every second of the space with the sheer length and breadth of their performances.
The Beaux Arts performances fill a proper gap between the sometimes overwhelming presence (in both style and recording acoustic) of the Borodin, and the clean, fine-boned playing of the Israel Trio. The C major work epitomizes their differences. The Borodin (who take nearly three minutes longer in their Andante variations, and lose much of their essential simplicity thereby) take longer strides, breathe more deeply from the lungs right from the start. Their playing elicits admiration: that of the Beaux Arts, affection, and more than the odd smile of delight. The Beaux Arts bring a sense of real clambering, of traversal of space and time in their ebullient working through of rhythm and modulation; and their Scherzo has a thrumming, bubbling joy which captures the spirit where the Borodin are here a little fettered by the letter of Brahms's law.
The Israel Trio seem at first strangely distanced from the music, but their feeling for scale and proportion, their fine nuancing, and their sense, in the first movement's second subject, of standing on truly holy ground, is something very special. These are performances to which one is drawn back again and again.
The B major Trio, Op. 8 both confirms my opinion of the Israel Trio and weakens, a little, my confidence in the Beaux Arts. Here they seem more tentative, more on edge: the great glowing progress of the first movement, so masterfully sung out by the Borodin, receives a bumpier ride from the Beaux Arts. This is due partly to Pressler's somewhat heavy, choppy piano playing, partly to the sense of busy-ness in the subsidiary themes, which means they lose that mountain-top vision which the Borodin maintain so gloriously throughout.
The Beaux Arts, though, do capture more the work's eager, youthfulness, and that is an irresistible element of their playing. It depends, I suppose, how you want to hear Brahms. The Borodin provide deep involvement and a sense of context within the entire oeuvre; the Israel capture their own and Brahms's capacity for wonder; and the Beaux Arts, human, fallible and volatile, offer their ever-generous, full-hearted powers of communication.'