Until now, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk have joined up on only a single recording, which featured the original version of Brahms’s First Piano Trio. But they’re longtime friends who occasionally perform together, and this Mendelssohn release came out of a 10-city tour. It thus has the best of two worlds: the refinement that comes with mutual understanding and appreciation (not always found in pickup ensembles), coupled with a freshness that’s sometimes missing in performances by established groups.

These new recordings sit midway between the headlong accounts by the Trio Wanderer (Harmonia Mundi, 10/07) and the lush effusions of Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman (Sony, 5/10). Yet Bell, Isserlis and Denk do not settle for moderation. True, the playing is more notable for nuance than for hyperbole, standing out for its sensitive dynamics, its illuminating articulation, its tasteful dabs of portamento and its artfully shaped phrasing (listen to how gorgeously Isserlis introduces the second theme in the First’s opening movement). But for all their subtlety, these musicians could hardly be accused of reticence. In their hands, the First’s Andante has a fervour that is significantly more gripping than the comfortable yearning favoured by Ax, Ma and Perlman; the following Scherzo, so often tossed off as a feathery bonbon, has a sharp edge; and few readings capture the uneasy expectation that launches the Second Trio as persuasively as this one does.

Most strikingly, these performances are marked by an impressive spirit of exchange. The three players have different temperaments – and it’s clear, as you listen, that they’ve not erased their personalities. What emerges, then, is a sense that they’re playing off each other, rather than compromising – not engaging in a debate, exactly, but participating in a discussion about the music. The results are vibrant without turning heated.

As a bonus, we get the Andante from an earlier, unpublished version of the First Trio, full of fascinating first thoughts that never made it into the edition we know. To my ears, that excerpt is better served in the recording by the Van Baerle Trio (Challenge Classics), where it’s heard in the context of the original version in its entirety. For the two published trios, though, this new release stands up to any (barring the patrician Heifetz/Piatigorsky/Rubinstein First, which is hors concours – RCA, 11/52); and in terms of engineering, it stands ahead of most.