Anne Frank composition an emotional experience
"Yesterday evening, before I fell asleep, who should suddenly appear before my eyes but
Lies. Oh, God, why should I have all I could wish for and why should she be seized by such
a terrible
fate. I am not more virtuous than she. She, too, wanted to do what was
right,
why should I bechosen to live and she, probably to die?"
This passage was authored by Anne Frank, in her diary when she was 14, and
refers to a former school mate, Lies Gossens, who was taken away to a concentration camp while the Frank family was hiding in
Amsterdam.
For 55 year old Czech-born Oskar Morawetz, a prolific and widely performed composer, conductor and, pianist, no other theme has so touched his emotional
spirit as Anne Frank's greater concern for the fate of her childhood friend than
of her own destiny.
His work, From The Diary
of Anne Frank, which was
first performed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1970, will be repeated under the direction of Karl Ancerl
- himself a survivor - on
April 11 and 12. Soprano Lois Marshall will be the featured performer, Time
described the 19 minute composition as "stark and powerful."
When eight years old, Dr. Morawetz was told by his piano teacher to discontinue
his instruction. Undaunted,
he was later asked, when only 21, to take an important position with the Prague
Opera House. However, with
the war just on the horizon, Morawetz fled Italy for Canada before Mussolini joined forces with Hitler.
"Anne's diary affected me
so strongly," he told The
Canadian Jewish News, "that when I began writing the composition all the old fears
came back.
"As the years pass by you kind of lose sight of the fact that, had she lived, she would have been only 47
today, and probably living a beautiful life.
"Young people to whom Hitler is only a name like Caesar or Napoleon, know of
her story and of her gentle
heroism. Anne is a legend, and it was an honor to compose music in her memory."
Dr. Morawetz, who also teaches music at the University of Toronto, has had not only his compositions performed by Canadian orchestras, but by nearly 40 orchestras
in the United States, Europe, and Australia. He has had over 18 of his
compositions recorded.
His works respond to the
compelling crises of our times. He has written scores to the memory of Dr.
Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
Lies Gossens, now married with three children and living in Israel, survived the death camp at Auschwitz. Recently she told of her last meeting with Anne Frank.
"I saw her beyond the barbed wire. She was in rags. I saw her emaciated, sunken face
in the darkness. Her eyes were very large, We
cried and cried, for now there was only the barbed wire between us, nothing more. And no longer
any difference in our fates."
