Musical chords

Osvaldo Golijov and Kronos' Dreams and Prayers

by Norman Weinstein

A blind rabbi's mystical teachings from six centuries ago might seem an unlikely inspiration for a winning new classical CD of string-quartet music. But an inspired collaboration between Boston-based composer Osvaldo Golijov and the Kronos Quartet has brought forth a remarkably original recording based on Jewish themes, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind (Nonesuch).

The Kronos Quartet, an ensemble known internationally for their championing of new music, collaborated with the composer three years ago. Night Prayers (Nonesuch) showcased Golijov's "K'vakarat" among several works by experimental Eastern European composers deeply concerned with spiritual expression. Supplementing the string quartet with the voice of Latvian cantor Mikhail Alexandrovich, Golijov's setting of a Jewish holy-day prayer was an emotionally overpowering mixture of spiritual yearning and quizzical despair. "K'vakarat" turns up again, minus the vocal, on this new disc. The quartet is supplemented here by clarinettist David Krakauer, whose own trio, Klezmer Madness!, have an engaging CD of genre-stretching Jewish music on the Tzadik label.

What Golijov has achieved in this new work is an unusually passionate synthesis of traditional Jewish folk and religious musics well seasoned with Latin and classical accents. The composer, now 37, was born in Argentina (which explains what a tango is doing in this otherwise Eastern European-sounding music) and has lived in Israel; for the past decade he has resided in the US. Musical themes from these locales are blended into an individual style for strings and clarinet, one evoking great emotional pitches of bleak resignation and ecstatic surrender. The Jewish mystical tradition, which Isaac the Blind's teachings are an integral part of, teaches that God can best be reached through prayer, meditation, dance, and song, which lift the believer out of his or her rational mindset.

The stunning momentum achieved in Isaac the Blind's first movement, which Golijov describes as "a heartbeat which accelerates wildly . . . becoming frantic," seems a perfect musical equivalent to those Marc Chagall paintings of Jewish life where loving couples defy gravity and float in free space. The Kronos Quartet bow their instruments feverishly as David Krakauer makes his clarinet swoop and glide maniacally in and out of sizzling string textures.

This high-velocity opening, evocative of God's playful energy dancing across the heavens, is contrasted in the second movement with an irregular pulse, a rhythm suggesting the drunken stagger of a man about to perish in a storm -- an effect achieved by repeating a four-note theme acidly on clarinet. The final movement, reprising the theme of "K'vakarat," ends the piece with a bass clarinet playing in it lowest register, suggesting a wordless questioning of divine purpose in the world.

While composing this music, Golijov recalled an image of his grandfather -- a highly devout Jew, and also a handyman whose pockets were always filled with hardware. Golijov concludes his comments in the CD booklet with " . . . why this task? Repairing a world forever breaking down, with a pocket full of screws. The question remains unanswered." Spiritual questioning has rarely found such compelling musical form.