Ainadamar

[uffeviking]

Wouldn't you know it: I sleep in one morning, once a year, and our champion opera critic takes over and 'overdoes' it with Aidamar! It's your opinion, Nigel Luv, you are free to express it and I willingly, - and with a big smile! - forgive you because I recall you voicing your overpowering, overwhelming and overenthusiastic praise and support of Saariaho's L'Amour de loin! 

[npwilkinson]

Have we already had a thread on this chap in the Composers section? I'll go and see...

I'm back. Yes, we have:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=4834.0

And now I've seen it again I remember this one:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=8588.0

Wouldn't you know it: I sleep in one morning, once a year...

You should perhaps try buying half bottles of lambrusco instead of whole ones.

[uffeviking]

Funny you should mention the Lambrusco! I just returned from the grocery store with TWO bottles of Lambrusco, the 1.5 l economy size, not the usual 750 ml size!

Thanks for reviving the other two threads about Golijov, definitely worth the time and effort to read again, tying in nicely with this thread about his latest opera! 

[npwilkinson]

Here's an extract from an NYT review:

As in other major works, Mr. Golijov unabashedly embraces feeling, melody and richly tonal harmonic writing. He skillfully finds common ground in disparate folk music traditions, especially Latin American and Jewish. The voices and instruments are filtered through subtle electronic resources. Taped elements run through the score, like the arresting opening segment that terrifyingly merges the sounds of gurgling waters and galloping horses. There is also a stunning climatic episode when Mr. Golijov turns the repeated sounds of rifle shots into a pummeling rhythmic fugue as García Lorca and two compatriots are executed.

There are other arresting musical passages, like the wistful aria that García Lorca first sings with its sultry melody, its gentle accompaniment in a comforting three-four meter, and sighing counter-voices in the orchestra. In the gruesome scene in which García Lorca is forced by Franco's thugs to confess his "crimes," there is a mystical passage, like some eerie chorale with sweetly tonal yet curiously disorienting tonal chords, elaborate glissandos in the strings and undulant marimba riffs in the background. And for all it tragic poignancy, the final trio for three female leads has a Straussian lushness, if you imagine Strauss as a latter-day Sephardic Jew.

Yet even in this final version there are passages that seem like filler: long film-scorish spans of moody, flamenco-tinged music over droning pedal tones, with melodic lines that make too much of prolonging the half-step resolution of the tune into the tonic tone.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

To be sure, there is absolutely nothing in the mere fact of unabashedly embracing feeling, melody and richly tonal harmonic writing, which does anything like guarantee against filler.

That small matter of What You Do With the Material, remains.  The use of material which large groups of people will find inoffensive, just ain't enough.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

(Hey, perhaps he is the new Rutter!)

:-)

[npwilkinson]

So perhaps Clare College Choir will do it. They used to have male altos who dressed up as women so I should think they could find a female one to dress as a man.

[diegobueno]

Mr. Golijov unabashedly embraces feeling, melody and richly tonal harmonic writing.

Any time a critic says this about you, it's the kiss of death, that's for sure.

[uffeviking]

Have we already had a thread on this chap in the Composers section? I'll go and see...

I'm back. Yes, we have:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=4834.0

And now I've seen it again I remember this one:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php?topic=8588.0

You should perhaps try buying half bottles of lambrusco instead of whole ones.

Found one of the many threads in the old GMG, this should be of some help.

(I am tempted to merge the old with the new but from a past experience, I let somebody else do it and get in hot water!)