Profiles . . . Oskar Morawetz
While talking to Oskar Morawetz it is hard to get away from the subject of music - especially composing.
Interviewed in his bright but crowded office in the Edward Johnson Building, Oskar reminisced about his favourite
compositions and the awards he has received in nearly forty years of composing.
Although the occasion for our meeting was his imminent retirement from the University of Toronto's
Faculty of Music after thirty years of teaching composition, we talked more about writing music than teaching
it.
He has had a good long career teaching composers like Clermont Pépin, Bruce Mather, Srul Irving Glick and many
others, and finds there is more interest in composition now among fledgling musicians, partly because composition
is now offered to students. There were no courses available when Oskar started, so he had to teach himself.
He has probably been his own best student and it is clear from the sparkle behind the dark-rimmed glasses that
composing has been his life.
He will devote himself full-time to composing when he retires in June, and has three compositions in the works
right now - an orchestration of his
Psalm 22, a sonata for bassoon and piano, and a translation and transcription for choir of Biblical Songs by
Dvořák.
A child prodigy who played operas by sight when he was ten years old, Oskar had to consider music a
"side-line" until he came to Canada in 1940.
In fact, Oskar was not supposed to be a musician at all but a businessman, and even studied forestry for two
years following high school.
He always had a secret ambition to be a composer and started writing "little things" when he was twelve.
A fluent pianist with a photographic memory, Oskar played operas, chamber music - everything.
When he followed his parents to Toronto, in 1940, he decided to make music his career and enrolled in the
Faculty of Music where he got his Bachelor, and later his Doctorate of Music.
Obtaining his degree was the turning point for him as a composer. Although he wrote music as a youngster,
he "knew too much not to realize how poor he was" and was intimidated by the notion that great
composers wrote masterpieces from the day they started.
However, forced to submit a composition for his Bachelor's degree he was encouraged because his quartet won
a national award. A year later, he won another national award for his Sonata Tragica for piano.
He turned to teaching to earn his living, but composing became his first love and he has never looked back.
Now his eyes glow as he talks with satisfaction and happiness about the many awards and friendships that his
music has brought him.
There was his Piano Concerto No.1
which Zubin Mehta awarded first prize in a national competition and later conducted the premiere with
Anton Kuerti as soloist in 1962. As a result of the great success of the concerto, Mr. Mehta asked him to
send another new work, the Sinfonietta for Winds and Percussion, which he premiered in 1966. That same year,
this work brought Oskar the Critics' Award - selected by a jury of twelve well-known critics from among 104
entries from 32 countries in the International Competition for Contemporary Music in Italy. Mr. Mehta, the
Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, has asked for still another work - a project Oskar plans for his
retirement. He treasures this association and greatly appreciates Mr. Mehta's interest in his music.
Another notable achievement was From the Diary of Anne Frank (1970), which earned Oskar a special award
for the most important contribution to Jewish music in Canada. It also brought him into contact with
Anne Frank's father, Otto Frank, and Victor Kugler, the man who hid the Frank family. From the Diary of
Anne Frank was first performed by The Toronto Symphony under conductor Lawrence Leonard, featuring soprano
Lois Marshall, on May 26, 1970 at the CBC Summer Festival presented at the Edward Johnson Building. On April 14,
1972 Karel Ancerl led The Toronto Symphony and soprano Lois Marshall in the U.S. Premiere of the work at New York's
Carnegie Hall, followed by a performance at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center on April 15. Oskar himself
attended performances of this work by the Czech Philharmonic in Prague and the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv.
His meeting with Golda Meier he now recalls as one of the most exciting moments of his career.
So immersed in music is he, it is hard to get Oskar off the subject. Outside of his music, his only interests are
swimming ("it's so relaxing") and reading. However, reading often leads him back to his music as he
composes for works he has read, such as: The Diary of Anne Frank, Psalm 22, and Railway Station,
based on the sonnet by the Canadian poet Archibald Lampman.
Even watching television gives him fuel for his musical fires. When Mstislav Rostropovich asked Oskar, in 1967,
to write a work especially for him, Oskar decided to compose a memorial for solo cello and orchestra dedicated
to Martin Luther King. The idea came to him as he saw on the screen, in 1968, the funeral of the late black leader.
He later received a special note of thanks from Mr. King's wife, Mrs. Coretta King.
His fifty or so works are in constant performance around the country with twenty-eight orchestral performances, five premieres and twenty-two performances of chamber music scheduled for the 1981/82 season. This spring, the CBC
will issue an anthology of his music on seven records.
Ironically Oskar has never written opera, even though it was his first love. Perhaps he will - now that his
schedule will soon allow him the time to compose "three times as much" music.
