Osvaldo Golijov: Yiddishbbuk
EMI Classics 57356-2
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 Looking for
something completely different? Well, look no further: Osvaldo Golijov has arrived
-- an overnight success after a scant two decades of struggle.
Born in 1960 to Ashkenazi Jews living in La Plata,
Argentina, Golijov (pronounced GOH-lee-off) grew up surrounded by classical chamber music,
Jewish liturgical music, klezmer, bossa nova, rumba, and Astor Piazzolla's nuevo tango.
In 1983 he moved to Israel to study at the Rubin Academy of Jerusalem. He came to the US
in 1986 and earned his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George
Crumb. He also studied with Lukas Foss and Oliver Knussen at Tanglewood. In 1990, while a
Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center, he received a Fromm commission, which resulted in Yiddishbbuk,
which was premiered by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in 1992. His relationship with the
group has remained strong over the last decade, during which he has become increasingly in
demand as a composer.
Since 1992, he has established ongoing relationships with a
diverse assortment of musicians ranging from the Kronos Quartet to conductors Oliver
Knussen, Seiji Ozawa, and Helmuth Rilling, clarinetists Giora Feidman and David Krakauer,
the gypsy band Taraf de Haidouks, Mexican rockers Cafe Tacuba, ethnic percussionist Zakir
Hussain, and singers ranging from Dawn Upshaw to Diamanda Galas.
Golijov was awarded the first prize at the Kennedy Center's
Friedheim Awards twice -- in 1993 for Yiddishbbuk and in 1995 for The
Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Other recent awards include the Diapason
D'Or (1997), the Stoeger Prize for Contemporary Music (1996), and BMW's prize for
music-theater composition (1994). He has received commissions from the city of Munich,
Lincoln Center, the Minnesota Orchestra, the South Bank Centre, Birmingham Contemporary
Music Group, Expo '98, and from the Schleswig-Holstein, Tanglewood, Spoleto USA, and
Oregon Bach Festivals, as well as commissions and grants from the Koussevitzky,
Guggenheim, Barlow, and Fromm Foundations, Chamber Music America, Meet the Composer, and
the National Endowment for the Arts. His evening-long St. Mark Passion,
commemorating the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, had reserved classical audiences
stamping the floor, and screaming accolades upon its 2000 premiere.
Amazing, isn't it? I'd never heard of him, either.
Golijov has taken all of his seemingly clashing influences
and forged a distinctive, seductive style out of them. Last Round, the first work
on Yiddishbbuk, is an evocation of Astor Piazzolla -- and its muscular swoops and
forward momentum recall that artist's best work. It's a masterful piece full of piss 'n
vinegar, just like Piazzolla himself. Played by two string quartets and a double bass, Last
Round is the perfect simulacrum of Piazzolla's bandoneon-driven compositions,
played as the composer marked it, "macho, cool, and dangerous."
That piece is followed by Lullaby and Doina, a work
for flute, clarinet, double bass, and string quartet that starts as a somber Jewish melody
and ends as a wild flight of gypsy exuberance. A scant seven minutes long, the
three-movement piece is as full of color and sounds every bit as authentically czardas as
anything by Bartók. It features a soaring violin line that has Geoff Nuttall bowing so
furiously it's a wonder his fiddle didn't burst into flame.
The brooding tour de force that is Yiddishbbuk is
the disc's true centerpiece and it shows that, while Golijov's popularity may have taken a
decade to mature, his talent was full strength from the start.
"A broken song played on a shattered cymbalon,"
was the first line of Yiddishbbuk according to Kafka, describing a collection of
apocryphal psalms he read while living in Prague. Of the book itself, there is no trace --
only the few lines Kafka copied into his journals, plus what he described in a letter to a
friend as the last two lines of the work: "No one sings as purely as those who are in
the deepest hell. Theirs is the song which we confused with that of the angels."
Golijov's quartet of the same name is his attempt to
reconstruct, from those tantalizing fragments, what those songs must have sounded like.
Each movement bears the initials and lifespan of the five individuals to whom the composer
has dedicated this work. The first movement (Ia D.W. [1932-1944] Ib F.B. [1930-1944] Ic
T.K. [1934-1943]) is dedicated to three children, victims of Terezin concentration camp:
Doris Weiserovą, Frantisek Bass, and Tomąs Kaudas; the second movement (I.B.S.
[1904-1991]) is dedicated to Isaac Bashevis Singer; and the third (L.B. [1918-1990]) to
Leonard Bernstein.
The piece is in constant motion, lurching from strangled
glissandi to organ-like sustained chords. Strings shriek and wail, chords collide -- it is
disturbingly dark, powerful, and otherworldly. Not for the faint of heart -- but somehow
filled with the strength of truth. This is music of rare power.
The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind constructs
a musical world completely different, but no less compelling. The piece, scored for
clarinet and string quartet, owes its genesis to a link so seemingly tenuous, it might not
have occurred to anyone other than Golijov.
Isaac the Blind was a 13th century Provenēal kabbalist
rabbi who dictated a manuscript asserting that everything that takes place in the universe
is the result of combinations of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. "Their root is
in a name, for the letters are like branches, which appear in the manner of flickering
flames, mobile, yet nevertheless linked to the coal."
Golijov perceives, in this "search for something that
arises from tangible elements but transcends them," a desire for the state of
communion similar to that sought by string quartets or klezmer musicians. He composed Dreams
and Prayers to resemble three of the languages spoken by the Jewish people throughout
history -- the prelude and first movement represent Aramaic; the second movement stands
for Yiddish, the language of exile; and the third movement and postlude signify sacred
Hebrew. Further, the movements explore specific prayers. The prelude and first movement
explore the central prayer for the high holidays (quartet) and the motif of "Our
Father, Our King" (clarinet). The second movement quotes the "The Old Klezmer
Band," a traditional dance tune. The third movement and postlude conclude the prayers
begun in the prelude and first movement.
The overall mood is solemn and respectful -- almost
mournful. At intervals, the clarinet breaks into sobs, wails, prayers, and dances. The
clarinet is the work's id, gamboling around the fringes of the quartet's conscience and
attempts at organization. The tension between the quartet's calm and the clarinet's rush
to climax after climax sounds far more sexual to me than the scenario described by the
composer, but what do I know?
What is undisputable is the transcendent passion the St.
Lawrence Quartet and Todd Palmer bring to the piece. The playing is phenomenal --
passionate but possessed of awe-inducing precision and technique. The thrill of discovery
is almost overwhelmed by our admiration for a near-impossible job well done.
Which, by the way, is a superb description of this disc's sound.
The recording is crisp and detailed, powerful and honest, refined and tonally true. It
never gets in the way of the music; it's almost impossible to imagine these works sounding
better.
It's always exciting to hear (see) a job done well, but the
true excitement in Yiddishbbuk is the arrival of a composer with something to say
and a unique way of saying it. Several weeks ago I'd never even heard of Osvaldo Golijov;
now I'm eagerly anticipating a lifetime illuminated by his unique, compelling, fascinating
voice. What a tremendous gift that prospect is.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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