Oskar Morawetz celebrates 60th birthday with CBC special in
context of Jewish Festival
The CBC helped celebrate Oskar Morawetz' 60th birthday (and Israel's Independence Day) with an hour-long special on Mostly Music aired in mid-May on both AM and FM networks, produced in cooperation with Toronto's Beth Tikvah Synagogue. The composer joined program host Howard Dyck in the studio to talk about one of his best-known compositions, From the Diary of Anne Frank; the work was interpreted by the CBC Festival Orchestra, conducted by Boris Brott, which also performed Srul Irving Glick's Violin Concerto.
Czech-born Oskar Morawetz came to Canada in 1940 and since then, his orchestral compositions have been performed by nearly 140 orchestras; his Memorial to Martin Luther King, commissioned by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, was recorded recently by Zara Nelsova and many of his vocal works have been premiered by Lois Marshall, Maureen Forrester and Dorothy Maynor.
Morawetz received the CAPAC award for best works written in Canada in 1945 and 1946; first prize for his First Piano Concerto in a Montreal Symphony competition; and the Critics Award at the International Competition for Contemporary Music held in Italy in 1966. He has been awarded a Canada Council Senior Fellowship three times.
In 1971, the composer received a special award for "the most important contribution to Jewish music in Canada", a year after From the Diary of Anne Frank was premiered by Lois Marshall and the Toronto Symphony, subsequently receiving its US premiere at Carnegie
Hall. It was the first Canadian composition ever performed by the Israel Philharmonic and will be performed in June in Prague by the Czech Philharmonic. It has been translated into German for a performance planned by Rafael Kubelik with the Munich Radio Orchestra.
