Osvaldo Golijov: Falling Out of Time
In A Circle Records
“A walking shiva.” The three words, appearing within the thirty-six-page booklet accompanying Falling Out of Time, provide a helpful way into Osvaldo Golijov's eighty-minute “tone poem in voices.” Rather than grieving family members sitting for seven days in accordance with Jewish custom, Golijov's father figure decides to walk, the gesture his way of dealing with the death of his son. When townspeople suffering the loss of their own loved ones see him walking in circles on the hills surrounding his town, they join him. Yet to his expressed desire to go “there, to him,” his wife responds, “There's no there.” The understanding he eventually comes to, of course, is that “there” is a destination that can never be reached. Still, while it is true that grief never ends, time does bring with it some semblance of peace.
The project originated in 2002 when Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder of The Parents Circle, shared with Golijov the story of a man who could not reengage with the world after his son's death and spent days and nights at his grave. A dozen years later, Golijov read David Grossman's Falling Out of Time, which paralleled the earlier story with one about a father who deals with his child's death by walking in an attempt to come to terms with the loss (the author's own son, Uri, was killed in Israel's war in Lebanon in 2006). Finishing the book, the composer determined that the only outfit capable of capturing the story in sound was The Silkroad Ensemble.
Established by cellist Yo-Yo Ma in 1998 (Rhiannon Giddens was recently appointed Artistic Director), The Silkroad Ensemble features singers and instrumentalists from around the globe and thus integrates multiple traditions into its presentation. On this recording, vocalists Biella da Costa (Woman), Nora Fischer (Centaur), and Wu Tong (Man) appear alongside Brooklyn Rider's Johnny Gandelsman (violin) and Nicholas Cords (viola), Mazz Swift (violin), Karen Ouzounian (cello), Wu Man (pipa), Kayhan Kalhor (kamancheh), Jeremy Flower (guitar, modular synthesizer), Dan Brantigan (trumpet, flugelhorn), Shawn Conley (basses), and Shane Shanahan (percussion, drums), with Tong also playing sheng. The thirteen-member group's realization is so sympathetic to the composer's vision, one would be hard pressed to imagine another equaling it.
The act of walking finds its musical correlate in the methodical advance of the material as it moves through thirteen parts, each different from yet connected to the others. That design lends the piece an episodic form and also allows multiple opportunities for individual members to distinguish themselves. Flower's synthesizer, Man's pipa, and the strings add striking colour, but singling out specific members' contributions risks suggesting those by others are less critical. The impression created is of a journey of incredible scope rendered into compelling musical form.
In keeping with the subject matter, the work is full of extreme contrasts in dynamics, style, and emotional expression. Balladry, dub, jazz, soul, classical, and other genres are boldly juxtaposed; some moments are anguished, sorrowful, and nightmarish while others are gentler and convey hope and recovery. Golijov himself characterizes the piece as an “epic lament”; to that end, the vocalists, singing in Hebrew and English, do much to amplify the emotional dimension through their impassioned performances (Tong is affecting throughout, though Fischer's singing in “Walking” and “In Procession” also merits mention); the instrumentalists match them for intensity, however, with their own inspired turns. The composer has deftly combined voices and acoustic and electric sounds into an intricate tapestry that's sonically multi-hued and stylistically panoramic; the story is so compelling, in fact, Falling Out of Time veritably cries out for a full-scale theatrical presentation.December 2020