Composer delighted by KWCMS recital
Composer Oskar Morawetz called it his "new premiere" Saturday, after
Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony principal oboist James Mason and pianist Leslie
De'Ath presented a stellar performance of a difficult duo sonata that didn't get
treated very well the first time around.
Morawetz, a native of Czechoslovakia who emigrated to Toronto in 1940 and
quickly became a major force in Canadian music, attended the Kitchener-Waterloo
Chamber Music Society recital along with about 40 others in the organization's
Waterloo music room.
Afterwards, the genial 70-year-old musician made any reviewer's job much
easier by calling the Mason / De'Ath collaboration "the best performance my
sonata has ever had. They are both wonderful players."
The Sonata for Oboe and Piano was originally commissioned through the Ontario
Arts Council during the early 1980s, but Morawetz politely declined to identify
its first presenter. "I can tell you it just wasn't very good, but other people
have done better since and now I have heard it just the way it should be."
Saturday's version of the ambitious and attractive three-movement work was,
however, a premiere of sorts. Mason and De'Ath had Morawetz coach them in
preparation for their KWCMS program of 20th-century reed and keyboard music; as
a result of several rehearsal sessions, the composer made a few changes in
phrasing that improved both instrumental parts. "It was very helpful to work
with Jim (Mason)," he explained, "because I am mainly a pianist and the keyboard
is a different way of thinking."
The performance itself introduced listeners to the more serious and probing
side of a composer whose earlier works (during the 1940s and 1950s) have been
described as graceful, lyrical, or even romantic. There was little evidence of
that at first in the stark, searching atmosphere of the opening allegro; yet
just at its most abstract, the same movement opened out into spacious longer
lines, still intense, but tempered with gentle connected oboe figures.
Bell-like keyboard motifs introduced a poetic slow middle movement,
continuing serenely under sustained high reed melodies. Like much of Morawetz's
work, it revealed a sudden and striking example of instrumental color that owes
as much to instinct as calculation. By contrast, the concluding allegro movement
leapt to attention with its angular, slightly mischievous oboe line and active
piano support. It showed that even in his emotionally demanding later writing,
humor and joy still have an important, very human, place for a largely
self-taught composer who often describes his music as something to be felt, not
parcelled out in mathematical quantities.
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