For more than five decades the name of Menahem Pressler, who has died aged 99, was synonymous with that of the Beaux Arts Trio, of which he was a founder member in 1955. Other players came and went, but Pressler alone remained as the linchpin of the ensemble until it was finally dissolved in 2008.
Over that period it gave countless performances and recorded the entire standard repertory of the piano trio, many in benchmark renditions. Then, at the age of 85, Pressler returned to the works for solo piano and for piano and orchestra that he had already begun to record in the early 1950s.
