Golijov's 'Azul'

Synopsis

On today’s date in 2006, at the open-air Tanglewood Festival in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts, the Boston Symphony and cellist Yo-Yo Ma premiered Azul (“blue” in Spanish), a new cello concerto by Osvaldo Golijov.

Golijov was born and grew up in Argentina, but his background — like his music — is cosmopolitan: his parents were Romanian Jews who immigrated to Argentina, and when he was 23, Golijov immigrated to Israel. Three years later, he came to the U.S. to study with American composer George Crumb at the University of Pennsylvania, and then settled in Massachusetts.

At first, Golijov imagined Azul as evoking his own experiences of hearing bucolic summertime Tanglewood concerts under a canopy of blue sky. But after its premiere, Golijov had second thoughts, and by the time Yo-Yo Ma finally recorded the work 10 years later, Golijov had revised his concerto. 

Golijov said he wanted to “earn” its blissful opening mood through a journey backwards through musical time and space, and the revised score backs up the cello with a neo-Baroque continuo comprised of a hyper-accordion (souped up with digital processing) and a battery of exotic percussion instruments like a wind whistle and goat hoof rattle.

Music Played in Today's Program

Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960): Azul; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; The Knights, Eric Jacobsen, conductor; Warner Classics 9029587521

On This Day

Births

• 1875 - Italian opera composer Italo Montemezzi, in Vigasio (near Verona)

• 1901 - Jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, in New Orleans. Uncertain of the exact day (or year), Armstrong and his manager came up with the idea of saying he was born on the 4th of July in the year 1900.

• 1910 - American composer William Schuman, in New York. He won the first Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1943 for his Walt Whitman cantata, A Free Song.

• 1912 - American composer David Raksin, in Philadelphia. He wrote more than 100 film scores, including the 1944 film noire classic Laura.

Deaths

• 1930 - German opera composer and conductor Siegfried Wagner, 61, in Bayreuth. He was the son of the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner, and little Siegfried’s birth was celebrated musically in the elder Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll.

Premieres

• 1940 - Milhaud: Le Cortège Funèbre (Funeral March), on a CBS Radio broadcast conducted by the composer

• 1972 - Wuorinen: Violin Concerto, for amplified violin and orchestra, at the Tanglewood Festival in Massachusetts by violinist Paul Zukofsky and the Boston Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas conducting

• 1976 - Menotti: Symphony No. 1 (The Halcyon), at Saratoga Springs, New York, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting

• 1998 - Danielpour: Bassoon Quintet, by bassoonist Stephen Walt and the Muir String Quartet, in Williamstown, Massachusetts

• 2001 - John Tavener: Song of the Cosmos, at a Proms Concert in London, by soprano Patricia Rozario, baritone Father Meliton, The Bach Choir and the BBC Philharmonic, Hill conducting

Others

• 1705 - In Arnstadt, J.S. Bach and a bassoonist named Johann Heinrich Geyersbach cross paths late a night and an argument ensues; Geyerbach threatens Bach with a stick and Bach draws his sword. Both are hauled up before the city magistrate and reprimanded for their behavior (See also: August 9 and 14, 1703).

• 1782 - Mozart marries Constanze Weber at St. Stephen’s in Vienna, with the grudging consent of Mozart's father, Leopold.

• 1967 - The scheduled local premiere at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires of Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera’s opera Bomarzo is canceled by the military government due to the opera’s unacceptable level of sex and violence depicted on-stage. The work had received its world premiere performance on May 19th in Washington, D.C.