Osvaldo Golijov (1960)

How Slow the Wind (2001)

for voice and orchestra

  • General information
    • Composition date: 2001
    • Duration: 8 mn
    • Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes
    • Commission: Orchestre du Minnesota pour son 100e anniversaire
    • Libretto (details, author):

      Textes d'Emily Dickinson.

Detailed formation
  • soloist: soprano
  • 2 flutes (also alto flute), oboe, English horn, basset horn, clarinet (also bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (also contrabassoon), 2 horns, 2 percussionists, harp, celesta, strings

Premiere information

  • Date: March 2002
    Location:

    États-Unis, Minneapolis


    Performers:

    Dawn Upshaw et l'Orchestre du Minnesota, direction : Alan Gilbert.

Observations

Il existe également une version de cette œuvre pour soprano et quatuor à cordes, voir How Slow the Wind.

Program note

How Slow the Wind, a setting of two short Emily Dickinson poems, was Golijov's response to the death in an accident of his friend Mariel Stubrin. He writes, 'I had in mind one of those seconds in life that is frozen in the memory, forever-a sudden death, a single instant in which life turns upside down, different from the experience of death after a long agony.' Originally for voice and string quartet, the piece was commissioned by Cecilia Wasserman, in memory of her late husband Herb, for Close Encounters with Music and was first performed in their Seiji Ozawa Hall concert of May 5, 2001, by Dawn Upshaw, soprano; Toby Appel and Justine Chen, violins; Kenji Bunch, viola, and Yehuda Hanani, cello.

Osvaldo Golijov, site internet du compositeur.