Last Round for Double String Quartet and Bass (1996)
OSVALDO GOLIJOV
Born December 5, 1960, La Plata, Argentina

Osvaldo Golijov grew up loving the music of Astor Piazzolla-in fact, he reports that he was unable to sleep the night he first heard Piazzolla's music. As a member of a cultivated Jewish household, Golijov learned to play the piano and studied composition as a boy, and in 1983 he went to Israel for further training. In 1986 he came to the United States, where he studied with George Crumb, Lukas Foss and Oliver Knussen. He is presently on the faculty of Holy Cross and also teaches at the Boston Conservatory and Tanglewood Music Center.

Two specific events helped shape Golijov's Last Round: Piazzolla's final illness and Golijov's encounter with the members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, whose playing has been an inspiration to him. In 1991 Piazzolla, then 70, suffered a disabling stroke, and in response to this troubling news Golijov began to sketch a slow movement for string orchestra. Members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet saw that manuscript and encouraged Golijov to finish the work, and in the process he changed the music considerably: he completed Last Round in 1996 by adding an opening fast movement and re-scoring the work for two string quartets and doublebass.

In his liner note for the recording of this version of Last Round, Golijov has described in detail the inspiration and form of the music:

The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar; the idea was to give Piazzolla's spirit an imaginary challenge 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. Two quartets confront each other separated by the focal bass, with violins and violas standing up as in the traditional tango orchestras. The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in criss-crossed choreograhpy. 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.