Young Czech Charms Society of Music
A string quartet by a young
Czech-Canadian excited the Society for Contemporary Music on Saturday night. O. Moravetz
[sic] came to Toronto just before the Sudeten tragedy of 1938. He took the music course in University of Toronto. His quartet, final thesis of his Mus.Bac. degree, won the Performing Right Society award in 1943. The Saturday audience of the S.C.M. heard its premiere. They gave the composer an ovation, in which Dr. Arnold Walter, president, was most enthusiastic following his luminous sketch of the society's work.
As Dr. Walter came here few years ago from Moravia. he omitted the fact that
this first assemblage of the original Vogt society in Conservatory Hall was the scene of the finest major work heard by the society in the very hall where the man in whose honor it was organized, built the world's greatest choir 40 years ago.
Moravetz was unborn when Vogt began to weave the tone-fabric of Mendelssohn Choir rehearsals in that
hall.
The Czech composer's quartet is a work of genius for harmonic tone color in modern form. The discords
are all beautiful. The composer knows exactly the melodic figure for each instrument to make a phrase luminous with sunset beauty. He is frankly international. The Andante of his opus has the subtle tone-harmony of French Debussy, the theme-magic of German Wagner, and in its development to a climax the impressive sonority of Belgian
Cesar Franck.
[...]
All the composers were called to the platform.
