Golijov's Pasión –Available on CD/DVD March 23rd

By -

A decade ago the premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos “dropped like a bomb on the belief that classical music is an exclusively European art” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker) and became known as “the first indisputably great composition of the 21st Century” (Boston Globe). Deftly exploiting the popular appeal and emotional immediacy of samba, salsa, flamenco, mambo, and the elemental vigor of folk and popular motifs, Golijov’s La Pasión según San Marcos sets the last days of Christ amidst the streets of Latin America. On March 23rd, Deutsche Grammophon releases the first new recording of the work since the premiere in 2000. Both Golijov and the producers at DG felt it imperative to create this definitive new studio recording of La Pasión to showcase the richness of the work’s texture and its maturity over the past decade. The audio recording on two CDs is released in tandem with the DVD of a 2008 live performance from the Holland Festival conducted by Robert Spano.

National Public Radio hailed La Pasión as one of the most important records of the decade, and has referred to Golijov as “one of the most exciting, innovative and important composers working today.” Commissioned by the International Bach Academy, it bowed in 2000 in Stuttgart on the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death.

The original recording of this work, recorded live at that premiere in 2000 was an important early document of this new work, but a decade later La Pasión has, according to Golijov

“acquired a certain monumentality. It has evolved from a wild beast into a coherent being; into something that is still powerful but in a more self-assured way. The important thing in doing this new recording was to show the stage of maturity the piece has reached.”
He goes on to say,
“The recording is radically different, because we know what we are doing and we know how to record all this vast array of percussion that was a blur in the first recording but now creates this rainbow of shifting colors. We also know how to record the many layers of the voices. We can really have a clear picture of what this piece is, as opposed to just a snapshot which is what we had ten years ago. Also, the performance is different. It is still visceral but grown-up. It is a piece that already exists. It is a presence; it is an entity in the world. And it sounds like that.”

On April 24 and 25, La Pasión según San Marcos will be performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s Americas and Americans Festival spotlighting music from North and South America. The performers include Orchestra La Pasión conducted by Maria Guinand, and vocalist Luciana Souza. This spring Osvaldo Golijov will be the composer in residence for the Toronto Symphony's New Creations Festival, held February 25-March 3, 2010 while March 11-15th will bring Osvaldo Golijov's final concerts as Composer in Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. More information at www.osvaldogolijov.com.

More information about this recording including excerpts, listening guides, video trailer and tracklist can be found here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more