CBC Radio To Broadcast New Morawetz Passacaglia
Composers are not always fortunate enough to have honors bestowed upon them
during their lifetime so, when something of special magnitude happens, let it be
known.Oskar Morawetz, whose winning commissioned work Concerto For Piano and
Orchestra was premiered in April, 1963, by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, has
had a second composition given its first performance by the Toronto Symphony.
Titled Passacaglia On A Chorale By Bach, it is memorial work to the late
President Kennedy and it will also be heard at 11 p.m. today on the CBC
trans-Canada radio network.
Dr. Morawetz sent me a letter the other day in which he starts: "It seems
hard to believe that it is almost a year and a half since the performance of my
piano concerto. As a matter of fact, it has been played since quite a number of
times: In Carnegie Hall with the Orchestras of the Americas - with the
Minneapolis Symphony - with the CBC Symphony (it was also recorded for the
International Service of the CBC). This season it will be played also in
Czecho-Slovakia and with The Toronto Symphony Orchestra."
During the past summer, Dr. Morawetz composed the Passacaglia and, he says,
"I kept the whole work in the style of Bach's period using, of course, the
colors of a modern orchestra.
"The task quite fascinated me, especially as we hear so often the question
How would a composer of today compose if he had lived in the 18th Century or
vice versa?"
