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)