The invitation to the composer Osvaldo Golijov five years ago was to write a millennial celebration of Johann Sebastian Bach in a new musical telling of the passion story of the crucifixion of Jesus, from the Gospel of St. Mark.
Golijov seized the opportunity to shift all the perspectives, including his own. He is a 40-year-old Argentinian Jew with Russian and Rumanian roots who’d lived among Catholics all his life and found himself transfixed by the Christian text. But his approach was not Bach’s meditation and comment, but rather enactment and ritual in the Latin and African mode.
Golijov’s Jesus is sometimes a Spanish-speaking black man, sometimes a chorus representing the people transformed into a collective spirit. His musical means include rhumba rhythms with spoons, Cuban drums and Brazilian martial-arts dances. He thinks of it as Jesus’ last days on earth, seen through Latin-American experience.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Osvaldo Golijov, composer of “La Pasion Segun San Marcos”;Robert Spano, Music Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic and Music Designate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.