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Argentinean composer of Jewish descent Osvaldo Golijov studied composition in Israel with Mark Kopytman and in the USA, where his teachers were George Crumb and Oliver Knussen. His compositional style draws inspiration from various music styles, genres and cultures. He grew up in La Plata (Argentina), where he was constantly surrounded by classical chamber music and Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, as well as by the new tango “invented” by Astor Piazzolla. Today, Golijov is one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers. Last Round was commissioned by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and was first performed in Birmingham in 1996. It was composed following the death of the great master of Tango, Astor Piazzolla, who was at the peak of his creativity when he died of a stroke in 1992. Golijov envisaged the piece as an idealisation of the bandoneon, an instrument that served Piazzolla to evoke the features of the tango. The bandoneon was invented in Germany to serve as a portable church organ. After finding its true home in the slums of Buenos Aires, the instrument returned to Europe and conquered Parisian high society. The first movement of Last Round bears no title and symbolises the act of the violent compression of the bandoneon’s bellows, while the second movement, a seemingly endless sigh of the opening of the bellows entitled La muerte del ángel (The Death of an Angel), is actually a fantasy over the refrain of the song “My Beloved Buenos Aires”, composed by the legendary Carlos Gardel in the 1930s.
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