After fifty-two years of performing, the Beaux Arts Trio remains the measure by which chamber-music ensembles are measured not only in terms of longevity, but artistry as well. The group’s fiftieth anniversary two seasons ago was marked here by performances of the complete Beethoven Piano Trios was a bittersweet affair that looked back on the group’s legacy with both sadness and joy: Isidore Cohen, who had performed as the group’s violinist for twenty-three of those fifty years had died just before a grandiose celebratory recreation of the first concert that the Beaux Arts had performed at Tanglewood on July 13, 1955. Founding member and pianist Menahem Pressler was as sprightly and focused as ever, working wonderfully well with Brazilian cellist Antonio Meneses who joined in 1998, and with British violinist Daniel Hope, who joined up in 2002. Pressler and Meneses communicate almost with telepathic ease and Hope is more integrated into the Trio than his most recent predecessor had been and together represented some of the most elevated live playing I have experienced from the Beaux Arts in two decades of covering them. The most significant chamber-music ensemble of the second half of the twentieth century is making its farewell performance tour with two separate concerts at Ravinia’s Martin Theatre: the first featuring Dvorak’s “Dumky” Trio along with trios by Ravel and Gyorgy Kurtag and the second an all-Schubert program, signature music for this group to make its area swansong. (Dennis Polkow)
