Patience has to be cultivated by any admirer of the Pires/Dumay/Wang trio: it seems a lifetime since their thrilling Brahms trios were released (DG, 5/96). But the virtue is more than rewarded in this new disc of early Mozart trios, radiant with the discriminating, fanciful and exuberant music-making which characterizes this rare trio of friends.
A crescendo of joy shooting up through the opening scalic and arpeggio figures of K496, answered by finely tapered violin playing and a cello which draws the ear to its contributions long before the true dialogue of the Andante: these are qualities which make both the Fontenay’s performances, and, particularly, those of the Beaux Arts seem somewhat overcareful, overdeliberate in comparison. This ensemble is the only one to find a truly lilting 6/8 (rather than the illusion of a sturdier 3/4) for the second movement. And the finale is full of a sense of wonder, in its platinum-tipped violin and the drawing back into finely nuanced tones of grey for the sombre fifth variation.
For K502, Pires picks up on the sense of forward impetus inherent in the rhythm of the opening theme, where both the Beaux Arts and the Fontenay tend to be sturdier. Nothing of the Beaux Arts’ beautiful sense of wide open spaces in the slow movement is compromised here; yet Pires’s phrasing makes its melody more shapely above the unsurpassed beauty of sustained tone in violin and cello.
A delicious performance of the little Divertimento, K254 reveals the ancestry of these two trios; and there is yet another bonus in a 48-minute disc of extracts from the six recordings of Mozart, Brahms, Franck, Ravel and Grieg made over the last six years by the incomparable duo of Pires and Dumay.'