Beaux Arts Trio Joyfully Plays Beethoven

Less than a year since beginning their life together as an ensemble, the current players of the Beaux Arts Trio--violinist Young Uck Kim, cellist Antonio Meneses and pianist Menahem Pressler--brought their accomplishment to Los Angeles. The reconformed trio--the old one was founded in 1955--sounded splendid in its Beethoven program Friday night in Schoenberg Hall at UCLA.

More than splendid: utterly authoritative, handsomely balanced, energetic and serene.

The first of three consecutive performances (which by Sunday night offered the complete piano trios by Beethoven) could be called definitive. More important, it gave the sorts of sound gratification and provocative thoughtfulness one seldom encounters. This was a joyful evening--joyful and triumphant, as the saying goes.

Its culmination and climax was the “Ghost” Trio, Opus 70, No. 1, which the players probed deeply yet with apparent spontaneity, as if it were recently discovered. The great slow movement, naturally enough, became the most seraphic moment in this event, but with an inexorable fluency few can achieve.

The three players maintained a similar level throughout this generous program, which began with an ebullient, pearly and virtuosic performance of Opus 1, No. 1, and followed with the exuberance of Opus 11, then offered novelty in the youthful--Beethoven was probably 20 when it was written--work called No. 38 in the catalog of works without Opus.

This piece, in E-flat, seems to be one of those few Beethoven compositions one can call innocuous: pleasant and clever, but without range or edge.

Pressler’s contributions, as leader of this masterly ensemble and its senior presence--he is 75, at least two decades older than his companions--cannot be overstated. His joyous pianism--technically faultless, stylistically impeccable, emotionally irrepressible--are from another age and a virtually forgotten sensibility. The German-born Pressler, an American for many decades, is a national treasure.