Into the blue

More than any other composer working today, Osvaldo Golijov has made his name by shaking up the classical-music landscape and disturbing its boundaries. He's become famous for incorporating disparate ethnic traditions and odd instrumentation into his works, which are highly eclectic, vividly scored, and approachable to listeners of all stripes. He has become the composer of the moment -- hailed as a creative genius by his champions, disdained as slick and derivative by detractors.

Tonight Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra premiere Golijov's newest creation, a piece for cello and orchestra entitled ``Azul" (the Spanish word for blue). It arrives at a critical point in his soaring career. Unlike earlier pieces, ``Azul" isn't planted in any particular part of the globe. In fact, to hear him talk about it, it isn't planted on earth at all. It strives, instead, for pure atmosphere.

``You see," Golijov says, paging through a printed score that has arrived on a FedEx truck at his small Brookline studio a few minutes ahead of a visitor, ``all the time there is motion and air." He points to a delicate ostinato in the strings and a long, slow melody in the solo cello. ``Air, air, air, air. Always, this is not grounded, it's floating. But floating with a direction, as opposed to just ambling."

Floating in the atmosphere is an odd place to find this most grounded and earthy of composers. Indeed, ``Azul" marks a conscious change of direction for Golijov, something that is all the more remarkable in that it comes on the heels of some tangible measures of his considerable (and youthful) success: a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003 and a Lincoln Center festival earlier this year celebrating his most important works, including the ``St. Mark Passion," the song-cycle ``Ayre," and the opera ``Ainadamar."

Gone are their tango rhythms and folk melodies, as well as their tensile, nervous energy. Instead, the 45-year-old Golijov offers a slow, quiet work that pulses and shimmers, that thrives on long phrases, transparent orchestration, and silence.

The Argentine-born composer is the first to acknowledge that ``Azul" marks a sea change in his work. ``It's kind of strange, this music that I wrote, and I'm very curious to know if I discovered a new kind of beauty or if I was under a great delusion," he says with a self-deprecating laugh. ``But I do know that it opens a whole new dimension for my music."

Among the new ingredients that make up ``Azul," the most important is the influence of Baroque music, which to Golijov denotes ``grace, serenity, levity, majesty, and refinement." He's fascinated by the way composers such as Francois Couperin achieved a kind of suspension of time in their slow music. He uses space-age language to describe this centuries-old phenomenon: ``It has less gravity than when we walk. The motion is always aerial. You never land."

The long association between Ma and the BSO also influenced the writing of the piece. ``This work is about friendship," Golijov says -- about the close bond between the star cellist and the orchestra. Golijov specified an odd arrangement for the BSO onstage, in which various groups are positioned ``like an antenna," radiating outward from the soloist and conductor. He hopes the stage setting will encourage the piece to be a true dialogue between players rather than a case of soloist accompanied by orchestra.

``It's not just one more super-virtuoso piece for the superhero, and [the orchestra is] going to provide the landscape. No! We are going to provide real interaction, like this," he says, weaving the fingers of both hands together and moving them back and forth.

A third, and equally important element, is the geographical setting of the premiere. According to the program note, the ``blue" of the title refers to the night sky, ``like the night one sees beyond the lights of Tanglewood, over the Stockbridge bowl."

``When I wrote this music," Golijov explains, ``I was writing it, so to speak, lying down on the lawn of Tanglewood. Metaphorically -- you know what I mean? I wanted to write a piece that sometimes merges into the night."

Whether such radically tranquil music can make its hoped-for impact -- ``a collective silence, a thousand people or three thousand people in a deep silence," Golijov says -- in Tanglewood's vast open air is a gamble, one the composer is cognizant of. ``Maybe the piece will be boring, I don't know," he says matter-of-factly. ``It's a risk, it's a conscious risk."

Ma, an equally adventurous soul, has responded wholeheartedly to the risks built into the piece, both in its physical layout and in Golijov's new musical language.

``It's how everybody chooses to participate in something that makes the magic," Ma says over the phone from the Berkshires. ``I think the rearrangement of the orchestra actually says, `This is not business as usual.' And I love the fact that he says, `I'm not going to write a virtuoso piece. I'm not here to prove how many notes can be played in one second. I'm here to say something that's true.' And sometimes the truest things are the most simple things."

``Azul" was originally scheduled to be performed at Symphony Hall in March but had to be put off until the summer.

``It wasn't ready," the composer says offhandedly. ``Hey, that's life." More seriously, he says, ``I could have done it, but it would have been a lie. This piece is true. It could be bad, but it's true. If I did not achieve a certain kind of emotional truth, then it's not worth it. I have a `truth-o-meter' in my stomach, and I feel it. And I felt that what I had then was not going anywhere."

Part of the difficulty was the intense scrutiny that is a necessary consequence of great success.

``I know that it's better for me, for a composer of my temperament, to work in silence, in oblivion," he acknowledges. ``I was free. I said, `Ah, it's so easy!' Then, all of the attention, all the spotlight: `Oh, we are looking forward to the cello concerto!' And I don't have anything, and [there is] this horrible feeling."

But, he continues, ``I am learning to be free again."

LISTEN TO OSVALDO GOLIJOV

Check out audio clips at www.boston.com/clips.

For Golijov, that newly won freedom may end up being the most important thing about ``Azul." For Tanglewood listeners, on the other hand, the question will be whether they can still hear the composer's singular voice -- the music's `Golijov-ness' -- now that his characteristic traits have been stripped away.

Whatever the reaction of listeners, he seems both reconciled to the demands of public fame and confident about following his inner artistic conscience.

``I am at peace with the great probability that I'm not going to be `hot' forever," he says. ``I mean, Stravinsky was hyper-famous and then he never again achieved the fame of the `Firebird' and the `Rite of Spring.' But I'm OK. Because I love writing music. And I have the great fortune of being paid to dream and do my dreams. And that's what I'm going to keep doing."

The Boston Symphony Orchestra performs Golijov’s ‘Azul’ and music of Haydn, Janacek, and Elgar tonight at Tanglewood. 888-266-1200, www.bso.org.