David Krakauer / Matt Haimovitz & Friends AKOKA

In their “brilliantly inventive” (The New York Times) live recording, clarinetist David Krakauer and cellist Matt Haimovitz’s AKOKA lift Messiaen's transcendent 1940-41 work Quartet for the End of Time out of the polite context of a chamber music performance, placing it in a dramatic 21st century setting that drives home its gravity and impact. AKOKA was inspired by the wartime experience of Jewish clarinetist Henri Akoka, who premiered the Quartet for the End of Time with Messiaen himself at the German prisoner-of-war camp in which they were both interred. Henri Akoka's vibrant personality and the story of his survival, with all its twists and turns, is the inspiration for this recording, which brings out the human aspect of this composition, seen through the eyes of one individual caught up in terrifying events beyond his control. Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time is bookended by Akoka, Krakauer’s highly improvisational, Sephardic-tinged piece, and Meanwhile… a re-mix by hip-hop/klezmer artist Socalled, who joins the ensemble on electronics. As the forces of fundamentalism, intolerance and violence intensify in today's world, this mounting of Messiaen’s great work is all the more timely.

Jonathan Crow / Douglas McNabney / Matt Haimovitz MOZART Divertimento

Mozart’s brilliance at the keyboard is well known, but it was his joy in playing the viola – and the musical dialogue and kinship of playing with friends – that led the composer to write his music for string trio. Mozart’s Divertimento remains one of the pinnacles of chamber music history. Haydn had already established the string quartet genre, but there was nothing like the richness and craft of this string trio before Mozart. The equality and variety of roles, the grand form spanning six movements, the constantly shifting couplings – all create a fully satisfying sonic texture from the spiritual and symbolic number, three. All for one, one for all, the three players share a bond, fraternal brothers connected by Mozart’s imagination. 

It brings me happy memories to look back a dozen years to when this recording was made in the marvellous acoustic of Église Saint- Augustin near Mirabel, Quebec. My friends and colleagues Jonathan Crow and Douglas McNabney join me on this Mozartean journey, all of us at the time professors at the Schulich School of Music of McGill University. (Matt Haimovitz)