Osvaldo Golijov
“Riveting: alternates intense meditation with wild bouts of klezmer… It is a raw, unpredictable, ecstatically involving piece, extraordinarily well played (Kronos and Krakauer simmer or ignite as the musical mood takes them) and very well recorded. Anyone excited by the fierier, folkier aspects of, say, Bartok or Enescu will love it. Well worth hearing.”
1997 Le Diapason d’Or
From Osvaldo Golijov’s liner notes (excerpted from a conversation with Brooke Gladstone): “About 800 years ago, Isaac the Blind – who was the greatest Kabbalist rabbi of Provence – dictated a manuscript saying that everything in the universe, all things and events, are products of combinations of the Hebrew alphabet’s letters. The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind is a kind of epic, a history of Judaism. It has Abraham, exile, and redemption. The movements sound like they are in three of the languages spoken in almost 6,000 years of Jewish history: the first is Aramaic; the second in Yiddish; and the third in Hebrew. I never wrote it with this idea in mind, and only understood it when the work was finished.”
SELECT CREDITS
Kronos Quartet
David Harrington, violin
John Sherba, violin
Hank Dutt, viola
Joan Jeanrenaud, cello
with
David Krakauer, clarinet, bass clarinet, basset horn
Produced by Judith Sherman
Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz
Released by Nonesuch Records
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