Composed 1996; 14 minutes

"Macho, cool and dangerous" is the way the Argentine-born Osvaldo Golijov asks his musicians to play the opening movement of this 1996 diptych.  Even the instrumentation and stage layout of the ensemble further an underlying feeling of confrontation.  Two quartets face one another in a V formation, separated by a central double bass, with the upper strings standing as in a traditional tango orchestra.  Golijov’s musical language has been conspicuously wide-ranging and eclectic over the past decades.  In Last Round, however, the Argentine composer returns to his roots with an homage to fellow countryman Astor Piazzolla, legendary master of the urban tango.  Golijov takes up the story: “Astor Piazzolla, the last great tango composer, was at the peak of his creativity when a stroke killed him in 1992.  He left us, in the words of the old tango, ‘without saying goodbye,’ and that day the musical face of Buenos Aires was abruptly frozen . . . The macho attitude of the tangueros was reflected in Piazzolla’s pose on stage: standing upright, chest forward, right leg on a stool, his bandoneon [a small, distinctive button accordion-like instrument] on top of it, being by turns raised, battered, caressed.

“I composed Last Round in 1996, prompted by Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman.  They heard a sketch of the second movement, which I had written in 1991 on hearing news of Piazzolla’s stroke and encouraged me to finish it, and write another movement to complement it.  The title is borrowed from a short story by Julio Cortázar; the idea was to give Piazzolla’s spirit an imaginary chance to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life).  The piece is conceived as an idealized bandoneon.  The first movement represents a violent compression of the instrument and the second a final, seemingly endless opening sigh (it is actually a fantasy over the refrain of the song My Beloved Buenos Aires composed by the legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930s).  But Last Round is also a sublimated tango dance.  The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the precision that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.”

Osvaldo Golijov, the Festival’s 2018 composer-in-residence.