Klezmer Goes Classical

UPDATE: Check out the Arizona Republic’s review of this performance here.

This September,

The Phoenix Symphony will present the inaugural Target World Music Festival, featuring concerts by artists from around the world showcasing unique musical styles. March 13-15, however, you can get a bit of a preview in Osvaldo Golijov’s work for strings and klezmer clarinet, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind. Clarinet soloist David Krakauer is one of the most successful figures in klezmer music, and recorded the work in 1997 with the Kronos Quartet.

Klezmer comes from the Jewish tradition, and is instantly recognizable in its strong, trance-like beat, its Eastern-European modes and scales, and its intense build-ups of energy that culminate in euphoric climaxes - check out the audio at David Krakauer’s website for some great Klezmer sounds.

What really separates klezmer from other pop styles, though, is that its integration into what is considered the mainstream classical music has been so successful. Golijov, and the many other composers who have a klezmer-influenced classical voice, has found a unique way to combine the musical and metaphysical substance of art music with the energy of popular klezmer music.

So while there are many other reasons to enjoy this weekend’s program (listeners unfamiliar with the work of Arvo Pärt will be pleasantly surprised: his Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten is exquisite, as is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, an audience favorite and undisputed masterpiece), Golijov’s Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind is one of his most popular works, and with good reason: it is also one of his most intense and most beautiful.