MUSIC REVIEW : Beaux Arts Trio Opens Co-Sponsored Chamber Series : The program at the Irvine Barclay Theatre was put on by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

Even with fraying technique and unequal ensemble contribution, the famed Beaux Arts Trio can persuade you that its members have direct access to the deepest wellsprings of Brahms’ creativity.

They can prove equally persuasive in the ravishing and dramatic challenges posed by Ravel. But, astonishingly, disappointingly, the crystalline purity and simplicity of Mozart appears to be a style that simply eludes them.

Such were the reactions at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on Thursday when the trio opened the first chamber music concert series ever co-sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Orange County Philharmonic Society.

Pianist Menahem Pressler, violinist Isidore Cohen and cellist Peter Wiley (a member of the 36-year-old group only since 1987) played Brahms’ Trio No. 1 in B, Opus 8; Ravel’s Trio in A minor, and, to open, Mozart’s Trio in C, K. 548.

Even with Cohen’s noticeably deteriorating technique and Wiley’s cautious deference to his esteemed colleagues, the Brahms’ Trio (an unexplained last-minute substitution for the originally announced Dvorak Trio in F minor) emerged with enormous impact.

Music of this composer seemed to be perfectly understood by these musicians, whether they were tracing out the long, welling-up arch that opens the work or the strong affirmations that close it. But it was the middle movements that proved especially memorable.

After setting a spectral gallop in the second movement (which adumbrates both the eerie, ghostly portions of Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” and the grotesqueries of Mahler’s scherzos), they played the contrasting middle sections with long-breathed but almost unimaginably intimate tenderness.

Similarly, Pressler’s pressureless playing of the chorale-like chords that unify the third movement evoked an unfathomably distant but irresistible source.

Yes, technically throughout there were imperfections; interpretively, however, the playing was revelatory.

The group opened the Ravel Trio with quiet, yearning fervor and ended it with vibrant, life-asserting vigor, with Cohen contributing sweet phrasing.

All the more bewildering was the misjudged, outmoded Romantic approach to Mozart.

Pressler played with mannered dynamics, Cohen with aggressive attacks and Wiley with self-effacing reticence. They spun out long but mostly uninflected lines, indulged elastic tempos and seemed content with sugar-coated Mozart.

Fortunately, the Brahms and Ravel pieces followed, and in response to applause, the group offered the Fourth Movement of Dvorak’s Trio No. 4 (“Dumky”) as an encore.