PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher

Osvaldo Golijov Born December 5, 1960, La Plata, Argentina.

Mariel for Cello and Orchestra

Mariel was composed in 1999 for cello and marimba; the orchestral version performed at these concerts was made in 2007. It is scored for three flutes and alto flute, oboe and english horn, two clarinets and , bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, chimes, crotales, marimba, tam-tam, triangle, vibraphone, celesta, harp, timpani, and strings. Performance time is approximately thirteen minutes.

These are the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's first performances of this work.

Although we think of him today as a major international composer, Osvaldo Golijov's first contact with music was in La Plata, Argentina, his birthplace. "I grew up in a small town with a mediocre local orchestra and a beautiful little opera house that was burned at the end of Perón's life," he says. "Music was this thing that I loved." He learned about Bach and Beethoven—and eventually about Stravinsky and Bartók—from his mother, who was a pianist. Then one day when he was ten years old, his parents took him to a hotel café to hear , the great nuevo tango composer. It was a defining moment for him. Suddenly, music was no longer something found in the pages of a book, but it was alive and real. "I could see not only life being distilled into music, but also how Bach and Bartók could be transmuted into something that was vital to Argentina at that moment, and into my life at that moment."

As Golijov undertook his own personal journey—eventually moving from Argentina to , where he lived in the early 1980s, and finally to the United States, where he settled in 1986—his career as a composer took off. He has explored the world, as well as his own complex identity, through his music, and this has made him one of today's most successful composers—a true reflection of our global civilization and of our times. But he has never forgotten his Argentine roots. The music of his homeland colors all his works in various ways, and Last Round, one of his most popular scores—it was the first of his pieces the Chicago Symphony played—is an unapologetic tribute to Astor Piazzolla and the art of tango.

Mariel was written in 1999 for two performers; the orchestral version performed here was premiered at in January. "I wrote the original version of Mariel, for cello and marimba, when I learned of the death in an accident of my friend Mariel Stubrin," Golijov explains. "I attempted to capture that short instant before grief, in which one learns of the sudden death of a friend who was full of life: a single moment frozen forever in one's memory, and which reverberates through the piece, in the waves and echoes of the Brazilian music that Mariel loved."

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to change without notice.