This release from late 2020 marked the return to the scene of composer
Osvaldo Golijov
, who had remained compositionally silent for some years after a plagiarism controversy. The album offers a single work, in 13 sections of different lengths, setting texts by
Golijov
himself that distill a novel by Israeli writer
David Grossman
. The book is rooted in
Grossman
's experience of losing his son in Israel's 2006 war in Lebanon, and
adapts it into a more general memorial processional. The work was commissioned by the
Silkroad Ensemble
and is dedicated to The Parents' Circle, an Israeli-Palestinian group of people who have lost their children in the ongoing fighting in the Middle East. It is recognizably
, with influences coming in from the various national traditions represented in the
, and the mood can shift abruptly from tragic to strangely upbeat. Yet, the overall feel is different from the music
wrote ten years previously. Partly, it's the seriousness of the subject matter, but it's not only that. The work does not have the feeling of pastiche, and when styles extrinsic to the basic bleak mood are deployed, they have a specific purpose. This does not make
Falling Out of Time
better or worse than
's still highly popular earlier music, it just means that, like other composers do as their careers develop, he has begun to think about musical structure in a new way. The texts, in Hebrew and English, are included in the booklet, but there is also a detailed synopsis, and listeners are encouraged to try listening, at least at first, only with that as an aid. ~ James Manheim