Biddulph have thankfully done very little tinkering around with these performances and I am glad that the surface noise of the original 78s has not been unduly suppressed, since nine times out of ten the instrumental tone suffers when this is done. The mastery of Thibaud and Cortot is of such natural elegance that one's reservations about the style adopted in the Bach in particular count for very little. The violinist knows exactly when to take the lead and when to restrain himself to an accompanying role and Cortot, too, comes across as a fine Bach player, especially in bringing plenty of character to the left-hand part. It is only in the first movement's cadenza, perhaps that his over-sonorous effects become faintly anachronistic.
The flautist Cortet is best heard in the second movement of the Brandenburg, where his tone is mellow and communicative. The sound-quality here is different from the other two movements and since there are only the three instrumentalists playing the music is more successfully channelled into the microphone. The finale has many entertaining rhythmic touches.
I find the Haydn Trio with no repeats aggravatingly brief, especially in light of the really wonderful delicacy that the players bring to the first movement, which lasts only three and a half minutes. Casals curbs his use of tone here and overall the ensemble playing sounds surprisingly modern, excepting maybe for a few slides between notes from Thibaud. One or two forte climaxes may jump out at one in the gipsy Rondo finale, but the movement scampers along as it should.
Fortunately, the Kreutzer Sonata does not suffer from the side-changes necessary in assembling the recording. Thematic material is played with admirable breadth and there is never any hint of the musicians hurrying. Cortot's ability to play with classical purity, seldom captured on record in this repertoire, is deeply impressive in the Andante and variations, and here too Thibaud has many individual touches to offer, recalling Flesch's assessment that ''you could not compare him with any other violinist''. Maybe his intonation is not always accurate, and maybe the reading is rather small-scaled, but there is never any doubting the depth of musicality. Cortot blots his copy-book a little in the coda of the finale, but by and large this is a superb performance.'