When the Beaux Arts Trio takes the stage at Ravinia on Monday evening, at least one of its members may be feeling a considerable sense of relief.
Certainly pianist Menahem Pressler, who founded the revered trio 34 years ago, will be thanking the heavens that his group is still making music. Just last year, after all, it seemed as if the Beaux Arts Trio would be no more.
”When Bernie (Greenhouse, the trio`s veteran cellist) told us he was leaving last year, it came as a bombshell,” says Pressler, the group`s sole original member.
”True, he had been talking about leaving for years, because he wasn`t feeling well, and it was difficult for him to play over 100 concerts a year and schlep to airports and wake up at all these ridiculous hours.
”But when he finally told us that he was really leaving, we were devastated because the following seasons had been all arranged.
”How do you find a new cellist after 33 years?”
Losing one-third of a tightly knit chamber ensemble must have been nearly as painful as losing a loved one. All the more because this was the Beaux Arts Trio, an ensemble that had made its name by blending three distinctive instrumental sonorities into a seamless, sweet-voiced whole.
As Pressler says today, ”A trio is not three instruments; it is an instrument in itself.
”Bernie recommended cellist Peter Wiley, and when we tried playing with him, I liked him right away, but you cannot foretell what will happen in concert, whether the chemistry will be there.
”If it hadn`t worked out, we would not have tried another cellist. I just would have said to myself: `After 34 years of trio playing, we must stop- it is over.` ”
Quite the opposite occurred. The new Beaux Arts has received virtually unanimous praise from critics around the world. And though Chicagoans will have to judge for themselves when Pressler, Wiley and violinist Isidore Cohen play the complete Beethoven Trios Monday through Wednesday at Ravinia`s Murray Theatre, all indications are that the Beaux Arts is back on track.
Perhaps they survived the blow because, like a family, they have weathered other crises together. From the beginning, in fact, the trio has traveled treacherous roads.
”When we started out, in 1955, I thought that it was going to be lots of fun. I didn`t realize it would be blood, sweat and tears,” says Pressler, who had formed the group with Greenhouse and violinist Daniel Guilet (who retired in 1969, replaced by Cohen).
”As it turned out, there was hardly any audience for chamber music back then, and to draw people into the hall, each of us would have to play solo pieces mixed in with the trios.
”After all, back then most people thought: `Chamber music is good for you, but you don`t have to like it.`
”We were considered bad medicine, so we used the solo pieces to sugarcoat our bad medicine for the listeners.”
Worse yet, what little audience existed for chamber music in America preferred string quartets. Playing piano trios, which had been a favorite pastime for families in 19th-Century Europe, was considered an inherently trivial activity.
”The audience seemed to think: `How can a trio be chamber music? After all, it`s like a poor man`s concerto, with a piano soloist and two string players,` ” says Pressler.
”So we mostly played in towns that you couldn`t even find on the map.
”And we fought among ourselves. It was a struggle to find our voice. When I would begin to play the piano, the string players would say: `It`s too loud.` And when I would reply: `But I didn`t even play anything yet,` they would say, `It looked too loud.`
”But somehow, when it came to the performance, it just seemed to gel. Something always happened-usually during the concert and not the rehearsal-some indefinable chemistry always seemed to take place.”
Indeed it must have, considering that the trio`s first recording-the Mendelssohn D Minor Trio and Dvorak `Dumky` Trio on the tiny Concert Hall label-won the Grand Prix du Disque in France. That triumph yielded a recording contract with Philips, which in turn won the Beaux Arts awards and acclaim for their complete cycles of trios by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and others.
Rarely had three first-class musicians devoted their full efforts to making chamber music, and rarely had a full-time chamber group been so richly rewarded. For Pressler, the turning point came in the summer of 1956, with an invitation to appear at the Ravinia Festival.
”We were invited to play three programs over three nights, and our group was so young then that we didn`t even have enough repertoire,” recalls Pressler with a laugh. ”So we had to learn the music especially for Ravinia, and when we finally played it at the festival, the audience acceptance was absolutely beyond any hopes we could have had.
”Those three evenings strengthened our belief in ourselves and made it possible to carry on. And after a while, the group started to take on a personality of its own. We served it, instead of the other way around.
”Each of us had a voice, of course, but somehow we followed the destiny of the group.”
In so doing, Pressler and friends accomplished something that transcended even the success of the Beaux Arts Trio: They established the trio as an accepted, equal counterpart to the string quartet. Today, there are dozens of trios touring the world, a phenomenon that probably wouldn`t have been possible without the spectacular success of the Beaux Arts.
If the trio was buoyed by America`s rising interest in chamber music over the last 15 years, it also contributed to that rise. The perpetually growing fame of the Beaux Arts certainly has helped build the audience for chamber music in general.
”Without a doubt, the audiences have improved since the beginning, and not just in numbers,” says Pressler.
”Today, when we play a concert we know that the audience understands us- it`s like a conversation, in which the audience takes an active part.
”When you play a Haydn trio that has a bit of a musical joke in it, or when you come to the end of an exuberant Mendelssohn Scherzo, you can hear the audience catch its breath. It wasn`t always so.”
How long the Beaux Arts Trio can continue its magnificent journey is anybody`s guess, particularly if Pressler ever chooses to leave. He`s a busy man, after all, what with his freelance chamber collaborations with other ensembles and his busy teaching schedule at Indiana University`s School of Music.
Still, the German-born pianist, who moved with his family to what is now Israel just before World War II, doesn`t show any signs of slowing down.
”I am happy to say that, even after all these years, playing in this trio has never become routine for me,” says Pressler.
”And I firmly believe that each time we brought someone new to the group, it changed us, which is as it should be. A chamber group should be a living organism, which means it must continuously change.
”I can see this happening already with young Wiley. We are spontaneously evolving because of him, which keeps life very interesting.
”So maybe I`ll play with the Beaux Arts for another 30 years,” says Pressler with a chuckle.
”Of course, you would have to be an optimist to believe that.
”But how could you run around the world the way we have been doing for the past 34 years without being an optimist?”
