Oskar Morawetz - Music

Music

Morawetz' orchestral compositions have been programmed in North and South America, Europe, Australia and Asia by nearly 120 orchestras and by such outstanding conductors as Zubin Mehta, Seiji Ozawa, Rafael Kubelík, Kurt Masur, Gunther Herbig, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir Adrian Boult, Sir Charles Mackerras, William Steinberg and many prominent Canadian conductors. Many internationally acclaimed soloists have performed and recorded his compositions including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianists Glenn Gould, Rudolf Firkušný, Antonin Kubalek and Anton Kuerti, Metropolitan Opera singers Jon Vickers, Maureen Forrester, Victor Braun, Louis Quilico, Judith Forst and Ben Heppner, and many principal wind players of the best orchestras in the U.S.A. and Canada who have commissioned and premièred his works.

His style absorbs, in his own distinctly personal way, several trends of the 20th century. However he was never attached to serial music or the latest avant-garde styles such as chance or electronic music. Musicologists and critics usually stress the melodic and rhythmic vitality of his music, sincerity and depth of expression, his sense for building up powerful, dramatic climaxes, and his unusually colourful and imaginative orchestration. Stylistically, he is a self-avowed traditionalist: "Ever since I was a child, music has meant for me something terribly emotional, and I still believe there has to be some kind of melodic line."

Among his most highly regarded works are his Piano Concerto and Sinfonietta for Winds and Percussion both premièred by Mehta. His Memorial to Martin Luther King was broadcast by radio stations in 24 countries in 1979 in honour of King's 50th birthday, and by nearly 250 stations in the USA in 1987 in a special performance by Kurt Masur and the Cleveland Orchestra. This composition as well as his From the Diary of Anne Frank, which conductor Karel Ančerl described after its Carnegie Hall première as "one of the most moving compositions he had conducted during the last two decades", have both been performed on four continents.