 • This recording of Mozart’s Requiem is especially poignant, as it was made in Troy, New York in the week following the September 11 attacks in 2001. The recording captures the emotion and immediacy of that special performance, which was later featured on CBC Television’s Opening Night. The Globe & Mail wrote about “an appreciation of the transcendent aspects of the Requiem as a work of art that is about death, survival and the possibility of an afterlife. There is the magnificence of the music, so often used to solemnly mark terrible tragedy and bring solace.” • Describing his approach to revising and completing Mozart's score, Robert D. Levin wrote, “Mozart's unfinished Requiem presents a breathtaking tableau of Baroque and Classical style. The present completion seeks a stylistically idiomatic restoration that fully respects its 200-year history. All of its changes seek to emphasize the spiritual and dramatic power of Mozart's fragment by placing it in a more focused light. As inadequate as such attempts must be, it is hoped that it will serve Mozart's spirit while honoring his craftsmanship.” • Les Violons du Roy, which has a core membership of fifteen players, was brought together in 1984 by founding conductor Bernard Labadie and specializes in the vast repertoire of music for chamber orchestra, performed in the stylistic manner most appropriate to each era. Although the ensemble plays on modern instruments, its approach to the works of the Baroque and Classical periods has been strongly influenced by current research into performance practice in the 17th and 18th centuries; in this repertoire Les Violons du Roy uses copies of period bows. The orchestra also regularly delves into the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries and has recorded works by Piazzolla, Bartók, and Britten. • Bernard Labadie's talents as a guest conductor are much sought after, and he regularly appears with major North American orchestras including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Houston and Toronto Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. In Europe, he has taken the podium with Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France, and the orchestra of Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu. He is regularly invited to conduct the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia.
ATMA Classique is distributed in Australia by Rockian Trading PO Box 44, Briar Hill, Vic, 3088, Australia Telephone +61 (0)3 9432 4149 ~ Facsimile +61 (0)3 9444 6879 |
