‘For an exhilarating sense of live music-making, of players constantly challenging and coaxing each other to new insights, these irresistible performances make this one of the discs of the year’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The second issue in the Florestan Trio's projected recordings of all Beethoven's music for piano trio is one of this lively and sensitive ensemble's best. The players do justice both to the sweetness and spaciousness and to the quirky humour of the great Archduke Trio, which receives a richly satisfying performance’ (The Sunday Times)

‘With beautifully balanced recorded sound, it's a CD for repeated listening’ (Gramophone)

‘The playing of the Florestan Trio is memorable for its lyrical tenderness, its luminous sonorities and its rhythmic buoyancy’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The listener's attention is constantly sharpened by the lucidity of this performance … a performance equal to the music itself’ (Nineteenth-Century Music Review)

‘Hearing what these players can do with Beethoven in his early stages sharpens the appetite for the other courses in the Beethoven trio cycle’ (San Francisco Chronicle)

‘This ensemble are probably the finest current interpreters of this repertoire on modern instruments, and their superb playing supplies some extra vigour and wit … with Hyperion's very good sound, this this has got to be a winner and has therefore got to receive a firm recommendation’ (Hi-Fi Plus)

‘The Florestan Trio’s collection of Beethoven trios is rounding itself out to be an outstanding cycle of an extraordinary standard. Now we have the opus 1 trios … the feeling of freshness and newness in the Florestan’s playing is highly virtuosic, yet witty and sensitive. Seldom is the vexing question of the balance between piano and string instruments so convincingly solved as here. The perceptiveness of the three musicians is enhanced by the fine recording technique’ (Klassik-Heute.com)

‘The Florestan Trio's performance is vivid and dynamic’ (Classic FM Magazine)

‘Susan Tomes's dancing, crystalline passagework is a constant delight; instrumental repartee is delectably crisp and pointed; and the players are acutely alive to the sudden moments of stillness and harmonic darkening’ (BBC Music Magazine)

‘The Florestan Trio seems determined to extract every last ounce of energy, wit and spirit from these early works … the principal vehicle for conveying the music's brightness is Susan Tomes's finger-work, wonderfully precise and rhythmical’ (Gramophone)

‘This is the third volume of the Florestans' four-CD set of the complete piano trios; like its predecessors, it's a winner … the first two trios, recorded here, are among the young composer's most engaging, entertaining and genial works, and they get performances of characteristic swagger, brio and wit from this elite ensemble, perhaps the finest contemporary exponents of this repertoire performing on modern instruments today. Sample the irresistible elan of the allegro first movements and dazzling presto finales, and be won over’ (The Sunday Times)