Osvaldo Golijov (1960)

How Slow the Wind (2001)

for voice and string quartet

  • General information
    • Composition date: 2001
    • Duration: 8 mn
    • Publisher: Boosey & Hawkes
    • Libretto (details, author):

      Textes d'Emily Dickinson.

Detailed formation
  • soloist: soprano
  • violin, second violin, viola, cello

Premiere information

  • Date: 2001
    Location:

    États-Unis, Lenox, Tanglewood, Ozawa Hall


    Performers:

    Dawn Upshaw et le quatuor CEWM.

Observations

Il existe également une version de cette œuvre pour soprano et orchestre, 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.