Music Reviews : Pasquier Trio, Pressler at Wilshire Ebell Theatre

That the Pasquier Trio cut Menahem Pressler down to size on Wednesday at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre may sound like an act of unwarranted cruelty. Pressler does, after all, stand not much (if anything) over 5 feet tall. But it may be the most potent 5 feet of pianist in the world of chamber music.

Pressler tends to dominate ensembles, including the Beaux Arts Trio with which he been identified for 35 years. One regards his collaborators as sidemen rather than equals.

Not so at Wednesday’s Music Guild concert. The Pasquier Trio--violinist Regis Pasquier, violist Bruno Pasquier, cellist Roland Pidoux--matched the pianist’s energy, strength and insight measure for measure in their grandly rhetorical and, finally, sparkling performance of Brahms’ G-minor Quartet, Opus 25.

The Paris-based string ensemble summoned luscious, vibrant tones at every dynamic level for the composer’s dramatic utterances and optimum rhythmic bounce--equal to Pressler’s, which is saying something--in the alla zingarese finale.

This was the climax of a program that had begun unpromisingly, with the strings’ scrappy, ill-tuned execution of the first two movements of the Beethoven G-major Trio. But by the scherzo of that work, ensemble was in order. And with the second work on the program, Dohnanyi’s String Serenade, Opus 10--a delectable grab bag of late-Romantic styles, colored by the composer’s own zingarese affinities--technical polish was joined to interpretive conviction.

The single encore: the slow movement of Schumann’s Piano Quartet, focusing on the firm, sweet-toned molding of its rapturous theme by cellist Pidoux.