Osvaldo Goligov’s How Slow the Wind for soprano and string quartet has text adapted from two Emily Dickinson poems.
The original, and short, texts read:
How slow the Wind —
how slow the sea —
how late their Fathers be!
(1571)Is it too late to touch you, Dear?
We this moment knew—
Love Marine and Love terrene—
Love celestial too—
(1637)
Goligov wrote How Slow the Wind in response to the death of his friend Mariel Stubrin. He writes, ‘I had in mind one of those seconds in life that is frozen in the memory, forever-a sudden death, a single instant in which life turns upside down, different from the experience of death after a long agony.’ The piece was commissioned by Cecilia Wasserman, in memory of her late husband Herb, for Close Encounters with Music and was first performed in their Seiji Ozawa Hall concert of May 5, 2001, by Dawn Upshaw, soprano; Toby Appel and Justine Chen, violins; Kenji Bunch, viola, and Yehuda Hanani, cello.