Youth Without Youth
Youth Without Youth (2007)
While Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov has become the darling of classical venues over the world with the evening-length works Ainadamar and La Pasión según San Marcos, this rich score clearly indicates that hes also going to give Philip Glass a run for his money in the classy-soundtrack department. For starters, Youth Without Youth offers a lot more variety than Glass usually comes up with. Since Francis Ford Coppola's movie is based on a novella by Romania's Mircea Eliade and is set in the 1930s, Golijov superbly suggests a moody, mysterious, highly dramatic Mitteleuropa--at times you feel like you're listening to a classic Hollywood score from the 1940s or 1950s, as if Max Steiner had hooked up with some gypsies. (Weirdly, "Malta," co-written with Arturo Castro, also brings to mind "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret.) Crucial to Golijov's sonic palette here are the dulcimer-like cimbalom (played by Kálmán Balogh) and the fiddle-like kamänche (played by Kayhan Kalhor). Balogh and Michael Ward-Bergeman, on accordion, face off fiercely on "Refugee," for instance. A couple of crackly songs, "O Alba Tigareta Parfumata" and "Noapte Buna Mimi," round off the CD, as if emerging from a jukebox lost in the rubble of old Bucharest.
— Elisabeth Vincentelli