La Pasion Segun San Marcos (St. Mark Passion)

Schola Cantorum de Caracas (Performer), Osvaldo Golijov (Composer), Maria Guinand (Conductor), Orquesta La Pasion (Orchestra), Lucianba Souza (Performer), Reynaldo Gonzales Fernandes (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Schola Cantorum de Caracas, Lucianba Souza, Reynaldo Gonzales Fernandes
• Orchestra: Orquesta La Pasion
• Conductor: Maria Guinand
• Composer: Osvaldo Golijov
• Audio CD (August 28, 2001)
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Hanssler Classics
• ASIN: B00005O7SX
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #164,201 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Osvaldo Golijov is an inspired Argentinean-Jewish composer, and his St. Mark Passion, an 86-minute, in-your-face work--drawing from African American, South American, Cuban, European, and Jewish music--is an exciting, vibrant, percussion-filled experience with the rhythmic thrust of Carl Orff. The combination of folk and traditional instruments forms a highly original whole, and his retelling of the Passion story packs an emotional as well as musical wallop. This big, "maximist" work is not lacking in tender moments, however. An aria describing Christ's agony, for instance, is as touching and somber as anything textually similar in Bach's Passions. Most of the work here is done by the chorus, but the solo voices, which are uncategorizable (i.e., not operatic, not pop, not folk--just good voices), are impressive and add to the unique flavor of this singular work. The performance was live, not studio-recorded, and the sense of occasion adds to the success of the set. Recommended for the curious and, well, passionate. --Robert Levine

Product Description

Osvaldo Golijov was born on December 5, 1960, in La Plata, Argentina, and now lives in Newton, Massachusetts. The score is dedicated "To the miracle of faith in Latin America, that lives through María Guinand and the Schola Cantorum de Caracas." Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, a provincial capital of half a million people about fifty kilometers from Buenos Aires in officially Catholic Argentina. While on a fellowship to the Tanglewood Festival, Golijov became acquainted personally with the Kronos Quartet, who performed there in 1990 and 1992. This relationship became a central one to Golijov’s ever-increasing profile as a composer. Golijov wrote K’vakarat, which the quartet later recorded, for Kronos and cantor Misha Alexandrovich, and in 1997 Kronos and clarinetist David Krakauer recorded Golijov’s Klezmer-accented The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. When approaching the composer with the commission, Rilling encouraged Golijov draw upon his own experience—as a Jew living in an officially Catholic country; as an artist with an interest in a broadly eclectic range of style and media; as a Spanish-speaking composer of Eastern European parents, now living in the United States, and so on—in discovering a personal perspective on the twice-told (or rather four-times-told) story. The text of La Pasión Según San Marcos is composed of portions of The Gospel According to Mark, the Old Testament’s Psalms and Lamentations, and Spanish poetry. Golijov matches the pared-down, vox populi directness of St. Mark’s account in the directness of his musical idiom, particularly in his appropriation of popular Latin American folk and dance music. He uses these forms as models for individual numbers with the larger work, which itself shares much in common with the structures of the Passions of Bach. From the Steve Reichian pulsations of the opening bars, to the sultry rhythms accompanying Jesus’ betrayal to the other-worldly setting of the Kaddish (the Jewish prayer for the dead) with which the work concludes, Golijov’s score is vibrant with energy, exoticism and PASSION! ►This is the ONLY composer authorized recording with the original ensemble!◄

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent performance of a major new work, November 28, 2001

By 

Vincent Lau - See all my reviews

This review is from: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) (Audio CD)

To those who are accustomed to the Passion being retold in the European classical music idiom, Osvaldo Golijov's "La Pasion Segun San Marcos" (St Mark Passion), composed as part of the Passion 2000 Project, would sound extremely exotic and even folkloristic. Indeed, the music may make one recall scenes of celebration in the streets and squares of Latin America than the sombre and spiritual biblical episodes which we are taught at school. Yet, once the listener is prepared to cast aside musical and cultural prejudices, this colourful and musically wide-ranging work is actually most riveting and, in its own unique way, serve the Passion story very well.

Golijov's 85 minute work is a collage of the music of South America, Cuba, Europe and Jewish tradition. Percussion plays a paramount role in the music, which exhibits a wide array of rhythms (including, for example, flamenco and rumba). There are also delightful uses of the Brazilian drums and bow as well as the accordion alongside music instruments of the European classical tradition like the violin, cello, double-bass and trumpet. While the music is often efferverscent and folklorish (though certainly not simplistic), it can also become introspective, mournful, achingly lyrical (as in the haunting aria "Agonia") or delicately impressionistic (as in "In Gethsemane"). There's also some mesmerising rippling effect a la Steve Reich, which sounds even more interesting (and harmonious) when used against a Latin American soundscape. As some of the reviews of the first performance put it, it is a magnificent triumph of Latin American music.

The various roles in the Passion are not definitively assigned and they may speak (in Spanish, save and except the Kaddish finale) through the chorus or the soloists. They are wonderfully and idiomatically performed here by Reynaldo Gonazalez Fernandez, Samia Ibrahim and, above all, the versatile and vocally charimatic Luciana Souza. The Venezualian choir, Schola Cantorum de Caracas, and the Cantoria Alberto Grau sing with commitment and energy. The Orguesta La Pasion, directed by Maria Guinand and anchored by the brilliant percussionist Mikael Ringquist, unified the different stylistic roots of the music into a coherent and delightful whole.

The recording, made live during the world premiere of the work in Stuttgart ...(but with the applause edited out), is well-balanced and the booklet which accompanies the 2 CD set contains the full libretto in 4 languages, a short article about the Passion 2000 Project as well as an extended interview with Golijov plus some notes by the composer. This work, a major addition to the repertoire, has here received an excellent performance and presentation. Do give it a try! It may open up new musical horizons for you.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing composition and fusion, November 13, 2002

By 

Sean Francisco Smith "New York Jazz MythMaker" (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) (Audio CD)

It's interesting to see the reviews here as they vary between the extreme poles of love or hate. My vote is with the former, I loved it. I bought this CD immediately after seeing the live concert, and I find it faithful to the spirit of that performance. My only complaint is that the volume on the recording seems to be low.

Golijov pulled off an incredible feat, there are a lot of failed attempts to combine the western classical idiom with other cultures, but here is a great case where it worked amazingly well. It is not Enrio Morricone as some have said here- it is much better and more complex in its use of local motifs. Neither is it Bach, because the composer is creating a Pasion for Latin America and attempting to represent modern Latin America's approach to Christian spirituality.

The composer is Argentinian and I think that's a key reason why his incorporation of Latin music works perfectly. The Cuban rumba, Venezuelan chorus and caporeraian chants worked well and matched the parts of the story they narrated. the operatic soprano for the Eucharist was an amazing touch, highlighted by its absence until this point.

Finally, I can speak for the audiences reaction when we watched this piece, at the end of performance, the Chorus, a group from Caracas Venezuela waved happily to the audience, which was giving them a standing ovation at the time. They then spontaneously began singing a standard sapnish hymn "no mas amor", and the several members that new the song sang back. I have never scene such a personal and emotional connection between performer and audience for any modern classical performance.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Riotously inventive, January 28, 2003

By 

Eric J. Matluck (Hackettstown, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: La Pasion Segun San Marcos (St. Mark Passion) (Audio CD)

Okay, I just had to do it. I read so much (mostly positive) about this work from reviewers whose opinions I usually respect that I figured I would give the discs a spin in my CD player. The first thing to be said is that (thankfully) it was not what I expected. What I expected was a mish-mosh of musical styles whose roots should never have yielded anything as substantial as "styles," blended for maximum impact and sounding like the score for a grade B movie. Instead what I heard was a sincere (and I must stress that word) utterance that tells a lofty story in a remarkably unaffected way. In spite of everything I'd read about this work, I heard no striving for effect: neither a lofty intellectualism nor a direct appeal to the gut. In short, if I may sound so boorish, it isn't Schoenberg but it isn't Yanni, either. It may not be the masterpiece I believe Gubaidulina's similarly commissioned St. John Passion to be, but it is chock full of strange and wonderful things. Although it is stylistically diverse, the heterogenous elements cohere. The different movements are like the various booths at a carnival, yet it's all to the composer's credit that we know throughout the work that we're still in the same fairgrounds.

The performance is terrific, with special praise going to the male vocal soloist (sorry, but I can't tell who he is from the program book). The sound is fine, if a bit less "forward" than the music would seem to call for, but better this sense of realism than in-your-face vulgarity.

I'll end by saying that each time I listen to this piece I find more to admire both emotionally and intellectually. And considering that I started with a fairly high level of appreciation, that's saying a lot.