CJRT offers compositions dedicated to Anne Frank
Toronto - Two original compositions dedicated to the memory of
Anne Frank by one of Canada's leading composers, Oskar Morawetz, will be
featured [in] a week-long tribute in this honor, Nov.25-Dec. 1 by radio station
CJRT FM-91.1.
Morawetz's orchestral compositions have been performed worldwide
by nearly 120 orchestras and by top conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Saiji [sic]
Ozawa, William Steinberg, Karel Ancerl, Sir Adrian Boult and all the leading
Canadian conductors.
The Czechoslovakian-born composer, who moved to Canada in 1940
at the age of 23, has been professor-of-composition at the University of Toronto
since 1958. In 1983, the CBC paid tribute to him by issuing an anthology of his
music on seven records - an anthology which proved so popular that within four
months of issuance it was completely sold out.
Due to public demand, a special record was reissued from this
anthology of perhaps his two most significant works: Memorial to Martin Luther
King for solo-cello, winds and percussion, and the orchestral-solo-vocal From
the Diary of Anne Frank. This special record will be available after Nov. 1.
Both Martin Luther King and Anne Frank were born in 1929 and
both were cut down by racism. It is entirely fitting that Morawetz, this Jewish
refugee from Hitler, should compose these two epic musical works to forever
preserve their memory.
Memorial to Martin Luther King was commissioned in 1968 by
Mstislav Rostropovich and was recorded by Canada's Zara Nelsova. On Jan. 16, in
honor of the first time that King's Jan. 15 birthday will be officially
celebrated as an American national holiday, CBC-TV will broadcast an all-Black
symphonic performance of this composition. Paul Freeman will conduct the
Victoria Symphony and Vancouver Symphony former principal cellist Anthony
Elliott will be soloist. King's daughter Yolanda will be featured speaker.
The King memorial will be broadcast on CJRT Nov. 25-Dec.1, as
well as both Anne Frank compositions by Morawetz. He received a special award
for From the Diary of Anne Frank from the J.I.Segal Fund in Montreal "as the
most important contribution to Jewish culture and music in Canada" [It] was
premiered by CBC in 1970 with soprano Lois Marshall and conductor Lawrence
Leonard.
It received its highly successful American premiere in Carnegie
Hall under the baton of Toronto Symphony-conductor (and former Czech
Philharmonic conductor) Karel Ancerl, who described it as "one of the most
moving compositions he had conducted during the past two decades."
Many other important performances followed including those by
the Czech Philharmonic during the Prague Spring Festival of 1977 and by the
Israel Philharmonic as well as by the Australian Broadcasting commission.
Four years later, on April 3, 1974, at Lawrence Park Community
Church, Elmer Iseler conducted the Festival Singers of Canada and the New
Chamber of Canada in a premiere performance of Morawetz's second Anne Frank
tribute - a choral work adapted from actual words of her diary entitled, "Who
has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till now?"
Both works have been performed in the presence of such
luminaries as Golda Meir as well as Victor Kugler, the Righteous Gentile
Dutchman who sheltered Anne Frank and her family.
Now Toronto audiences can hear these two classics, plus the
immortal King memorial, and other works by Morawetz, during the week of Nov.
25-Dec. 1 over CJRT-FM.
