Ambache Chamber Ensemble - Mozart: Piano Trios (2006)

With authentic-instrument performances and various other unorthodox methods of Mozart circulating, it's easy to overlook straight-ahead performances like this one, performances that exhibit an easy grace that pianists, especially, struggle for years to master. There's nothing particularly innovative or striking about these modern-instrument readings of Mozart's piano trios, but let them sink in -- and the care with which they are done will stick with you. It comes through in the flawless balance among the three instruments: these are essentially accompanied piano sonatas, with bits of unexpected echo and other hints of Mozartian imagination constantly bubbling over the edges of the genre, and Britain's Ambache Chamber Ensemble gives just the right weight to the violin and cello. (One negative is the odd contention in the booklet that "the combination of tonally dissimilar instruments made it difficult to create equality in piano trios" -- tell it to Beethoven!). As so often is the case with Mozart, the skill of the performers shows in the simplest music, in the music where Mozart forced himself to stick to his brief of providing music for amateurs. Try the limpid Andante grazioso movement of the Piano Trio in E major, K. 542, for example. It's a cousin to the easy Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545, from roughly the same stage of Mozart's career, and when done right, as it is here, it has the same quality of calm that inexplicably sticks in the memory. Especially with the inclusion of the little-heard Triosatz in D major, K. 442, this is a fine representation of this rather minor corner of the Mozartian canon.