If the Beaux Arts had merely offered us a transfer of their 1967-made recording of Mozart's piano trios, two CD's would have sufficed—as with the Borodin earlier this year for Chandos. But this is a new product (of course with Isidore Cohen, not Daniel Guilet, as violinist) including not just the standard half dozen (the five mature works of 1786–8 plus the so-called Divertimento in B flat, K254, of 1776) but also a seventh Trio in D minor eventually accorded the catalogue number of K442 after the Abbe Stadler had completed and assembled its three independently conceived, unfinished movements. Dismissed by Alec Hyatt-King (in his BBC Music Guide) as ''of little moment'', the work struck me as no less worthy of an occasional hearing than the questionable posthumously published Trio in A for which the Beaux Arts so gallantly found a place in their complete Brahms set (reviewed in January) in Mozart's case if only for the first movement's delectably happy second subject and the high spirits of the 'hunting' finale, which incidentally is brilliantly played, not least by the pianist.
That alone doesn't account for a whole extra disc. To justify its cost the Beaux Arts also include one or two repeats omitted before, such as the first sections of the slow movements of K254 in B flat and K548 in C. More significantly, they now allow themselves just a little more time for reading between the lines and cossetting detail—as, for instance, in the second subject of the opening Allegro of K548, and some of the variations of the finale of K496 in G. I think I'm right in saying that only in the first two movements of K502 in B flat is their tempo marginally faster than in 1967.
But even if now leaning a little more towards Tamino rather than the carefree youthful Papageno of old, the Beaux Arts still present a recognizably Viennese Mozart. From the Borodin he from time to time seems a little more Germanic, not least because of their predilection for deliberate tempo. They are certainly far too deliberate for the final Allegretto of K564 in G to dance as it should. And as I also wrote when reviewing their own album last February, nor can they catch the gracious 6 / 8 lilt of the Andante of K542 in E, one of the richest of the set, at their leisurely pace. Yet time and time again it was these searching Russian musicians who did most to increase my respect for Mozart's craftsmanship in the medium of the piano trio. For never from them, not even in the early B flat Divertimento, are the strings allowed to sound subservient.
This, of course, is where producers and engineers come into the story. While prepared to concede that these new Beaux Arts CDs have just that much more presence, or bloom, than their older LPs, I do feel that microphones over-favour the piano. Beautifully warm and mellow as it is, I would so often have preferred to hear fuller, more forward strings. The Borodin, closely recorded in the resonant acoustic of The Maltings at Snape sometimes sound a little less pure in tone-quality. But perhaps thanks to the players themselves no less than their venue and reproduction, violin and cello emerge just as vibrant as the keyboard—and that is much to Mozart's gain. So once more, as when comparing the Borodin with the earlier Beaux Arts set, all I can say in conclusion is chacun a son gout!'