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	Golijov: Yiddishbbuk St. Lawrence String Quartet, Todd Palmer, ... EMI Classics, 2007 average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Lullaby and Doina" incorporates Jewish and Gypsy themes, part slow and sad, part wild and motoric, with a radiant violin solo soaring above the woodwinds. "Yiddishbbuk," written for the St. Lawrence Quartet on Tanglewood's Fromm Commission, is inspired by a line from an apocryphal psalm: "No one sings as purely as those who are in the deepest hell...." Its first movement commemorates three children who perished in the Nazi concentration camp Terezin. Golijov evokes their anguish in music that is by turns wild, raucous, slashing, mysterious, eerie, and always heart-rending. Tremolos flutter up above aching dissonances, alternating with organlike, sustained chords; slides and crashes sound like strangled death cries. Isaac the Blind was a famous kabbalist rabbi and mystic. His "Dreams and Prayers," scored for string quartet and clarinet, are depicted in music that is calm, mysterious, meditative, and devout, but intermittently breaks into traditional dance tunes, and builds up to several tremendous climaxes. The clarinet speaks, sings, sobs, screams, and prays in true klezmer style. The playing is fabulous, the total effect mesmerizing, but the real miracle is that this young Canadian quartet and American clarinetist can identify so completely with a culture surely worlds away from their own. --Edith Eisler

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It's All About Sound, Isn't It?

It's extraordinarily hard to comprehend what other people "hear" when they listen to music, or to guess what they expect to hear when they listen to new music. The reviews of this CD are dramatically polarized and confrontational. Okay, I should have expected as much, since Golijov, like many contemporary composers, takes a confrontational stance toward his audience. Golijov DOES make his Jewish musical identity/heritage as assertive as he can, even though most goyim around the world have no listening experience of klezmer clarinet to reference. Golijov, like Schnittke, makes the modern composer's interface with musical memories - the presence of the past - a matter of shared confrontation; "in an era of access by recording to all the history of music," he seems to say, "we can't help hearing fragments of everything old in everything new." So we listeners have to share that confrontation with him. And of course there's the huge confrontation of European music, in all its elaborate imperial self-assurance, with the music of "others".
With so many options of confrontation, perhaps the smallest ensemble offers the best vehicle for the composer to make the biggest statement about "sound". For these relatively small compositions, Golijov uses only the expanded string quartet. Of course, for a contemporary to write a string quartet is already a confrontation with 250 years of great music. Then to write a clarinet into the quartet format is inherently to take on the memories we sophisticated Euro-musicians have of Mozart and Brahms. Well, so be it: music exists in the memory, both short-term and long. The instant of sound is made significant by the memory of the phrase. To make an analogy: you can't read one word at a time; you need to remember enough words long enough to constitute a thought. Golijov formulates thoughts in his music; he composes in phrases, and that's what I like.

Attention to simple sonority is also relevant in listening to Golijov. The use he makes of the double bass in Last Round is "profound" in two senses. The clarinet parts in Lullaby and in Dreams and Prayers would be immense fun to play! (Even if you don't play a clarinet, or any instrument, don't you get much of your pleasure in music from "playing along"? I certainly do.) By the sometimes abstruse canons of modern music, the works of Golijov are accessible, offering pleasures on the first listening. But there are also depths which I have heard only on later listenings.

Other reviewers have suggested this CD as a "starting place" for hearing Golijov. I'd go a bit farther. I'd say this CD represents Golijov at his best and most musically focused. More than a starting place, it's an end in itself.

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A Strange, Yet Lovely Piece

I heard this first in concert played by Tood Palmer, and I can honestly say that it was one of the most amazing performances ever. Once I heard that, I just had to get the CD. The CD is strange and moody with a strong Yiddish flavor, but it is original enough to stand up on its own. This CD is worth it, if only to get "Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind."


MOVING MUSIC, LISTEN (MAYBE A FEW TIMES) THEN REALLY ENJOY !

I had the chance to become acquainted with Golijov's music in a concert by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional (México), Directed by Carlos Miguel Prieto, the program played included Golijov "Last Round" and Astor Pizzolla "Estaciones Porteñas", the soloist at the violin was Phillipe Quint, so that made a hard to forget remarkable performance,.

After that I found this CD, which includes "last Round", the music its moving and the performance flawless, it may require a few listening session to really grasp the music but its worth it. I especially like "last round" and "prayers of Isacc the Blind", but all disc its good, I will begin looking for more music composed by Golijov.

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Passionate Chamber Music

I've only recently discovered the work of Osvaldo Golijov, but I think he is the most interesting new composer I have come across in the last ten years. His music manages to be melodic, harmonic and passionate without ever really sounding derivative. Mind you, not every piece is equally successful, but at least two works on this album are. The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind for klezmer clarinet and string quartet is deeply moving, as is the Lullaby and Doina (the latter influenced by Taraf de Haidouks). I'm less convinced by the tango tribute of the Last Round and I haven't quite come to terms yet with Yiddishbbuk itself. But this album is highly recommended nonetheless.

And what great cover photos!

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reviews: page 1, 2



Tracks
Last Round: Movido, urgente-Macho, cool and dangerous | Last Round: Lentissimo | Lullaby And Doina: Lullaby | Lullaby And Doina: Doina | Lullaby And Doina: Gallop | Yiddishbbuk: I | Yissishbbuk: II | Yiddishbbuk: III | The Dreams And Prayers Of Isaac The Blind: Prelude: Calmo, sospeso | The Dreams And Prayers Of Isaac The Blind: Agitato-Con | The Dreams And Prayers Of Isaac The Blind: Teneramente-Ruvido-Presto | The Dreams And Prayers Of Isaac The Blind: Calmo, sospeso-Allegro | The Dreams And Prayers Of Isaac The Blind: Postlude: Lento,

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