Mozart's deceptively titled string trio is still among the least known of all his supremely great works, and a new recording as accomplished as this is one of the more welcome bicentenary additions to the bloated Mozart catalogue. Though, as in the Grumiaux performance on Philips, the first violinist has the most assertive musical personality, the French trio make a finely integrated team who evidently love this music and have thought deeply about it. Theirs is a decidedly romantic view of the work, with a liberal use of portamento and (especially) rubato, and a bolder spectrum of dynamics and tone colour than I've ever encountered in this work. Purists may like to move on without further ado, but the players can illuminate a particular phrase or paragraph in a way unmatched in rival performances. I'm thinking, for instance, of the trance-like stillness at the start of the first-movement development (4'58''), the tone drained of vibrato; or the uncannily fine line-drawing in the minore of the fourth-movement variations (from 4'50'') where, with vibrato again eschewed, each instrument produces a slender filament of blanched, disembodied sound. And the French trio's unusually gentle, musing way with the finale (cousin to that in the B flat Piano Concerto, K595) reveals undertones of wistfulness in the music that you might not have suspected.
So far so good. But the romantic, lovingly detailed approach of Dumay and his colleagues has its dangers. In the first movement, for instance, the players' rhythmic flexibility, with pauses protracted and cadences caressed, and their penchant for unmarked dynamic contrasts, can make the music seem unduly sectional—long-term vision blurred by the intoxication of the moment. The Adagio, too, though intensely felt, tends to lack forward impulse (and I do think the unmarked forte-piano effects weaken the extraordinary, quasi-operatic outburst at bar 30—2'13''). But it was in the two minuets, both taken, or at least launched, quite smartly, that I found the rhythmic freedom hardest to accept: the third movement (whose staccato-legato contrasts are insufficiently pointed) is apt to sound nervy and unsettled, while the Trio of the fifth, a delicious Landler, has barely four bars in the same tempo—the effect here is simply arch.
For all the commitment and individual insights in this new performance, I can't prefer it to the more poised, natural and far-seeing interpretation of Grumiaux and his colleagues, who, if a touch cooler than the French trio, never cross the thin divide between affection and indulgence. The Grumiaux Trio also throw in an intriguing bonus in the shape of three of the six Preludes and Fugues, K404a. Dumay and his colleagues are, admittedly, more generous with repeats, but 51 minutes at full price is expensive. Not surprisingly, though, the new disc wins on sound quality—warmer, more spacious and better balanced than the slightly dry, top-heavy 1967 Grumiaux recording.'