Remembering Marijosius

The first VYTAUTAS MARIJOSIUS programming winner annouced

2011-08-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

The American Prize is pleased to announce the winner of The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award, 2011.

Among a field of very strong contenders that included many who program new music on a regular basis (especially within college and university music departments), the focus fell to conductors who take courageous chances, giving over large portions of their programs to unusual (but not necessarily new) repertoire, while balancing it with standard works or composers in ways that appear natural on the page, or who include less common names or pieces on their concerts as a matter of course, or who seem to make “adventure” part of the regular experience for their orchestras and audiences. All these approaches honor the memory of Maestro Vytautas Marijosius, for whom the prize is awarded.

From David Katz, chief judge: “For nearly thirty five years Director of Orchestral Activities at the Hartt School, Vytautas Marijosius programmed concerts that were alive in every sense—not programming for novelty’s sake alone, nor neglecting the great masters of the past—but always bringing to the awareness of his students and his audience great composers of the current time and potential masters of the future. I believe he would be pleased in different ways with each of the four honorees listed below.”

(Additional information about the programs and programming philosophies of the 2011 winner and runners-up will be published soon.)

The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award:

Donald L. Appert, music director/conductor, Oregon Sinfonietta, Portland, OR

Donald Appert has been Music Director/Conductor of the Clark College Orchestra since 1990. He has guest conducted orchestras in Europe, Central America, Japan and Australia. Currently he is a Professor of Music and Head of the Music Department at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington. In addition he is the Music Director/Conductor of the Oregon Sinfonietta in Portland, Oregon and the Sanctuary Choir Director for the First United Methodist Church of Vancouver, Washington.

David Leibowitz, music director of the New York Repertory Orchestra, New York, NY, placed second.

Jeffery Meyer, director of orchestral activities of the Ithaca College Orchestras, Ithaca, NY, placed third.

Peter Freisinger, music director and conductor of the Freisinger Chamber Orchestra, Boston, MA, received an Honorable Mention.

Congratulations!

WIT: about conductors

2011-02-02T11:39:00.000-08:00

The great Lithuanian maestro Vytautas Marijosius said:

"Some people who hold baton

only have right to hold banana...

...or umbrella."

The VYTAUTAS MARIJOSIUS Awards in Conducting, 2011

2011-01-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

I am very pleased to announce that The American Prize competitions has received a generous gift from the family of Maestro Vytautas Marijosius to fund cash awards in conducting and orchestral programming, honoring the memory of the great Lithuanian Maestro who taught at the Hartt School of Music for more than thirty years.

In addition to written evaluations and certificates of accomplishment, winners of The American Prize in Conducting—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Awards in 2011 in the following categories will each receive $200 cash awards as a result of the Marijosius Family gift:

Orchestral Conducting

professional, college/university and community categories

Opera Conducting

professional category

Orchestral Programming

one $200 prize will be awarded. Additional prizes of from $100-$200 may be awarded if the number and quality of other applicants warrant.

The postmark deadline for the competitions is:

Tuesday, March 15, 2011.

Complete information, including requirements and application forms, may be found on the website The American Prize.

about MARIJOSIUS

2011-01-23T11:40:00.000-08:00

by David Katz, assistant and disciple

Maestro Vytautas Marijosius was born in Lithuania in 1910. He studied at the Prague Conservatory with Hermann Scherchen and Vaclav Talich and by the age of 28 was music director of the Lithuanian State Opera. He recorded for Deutsche Grammaphone, guest conducted throughout Eastern Europe, and was awarded the Order of the White Lion by the Czechoslovak government for his services to Czech culture, the country’s highest honor to a non-citizen.

Driven from his homeland by the Communists, he settled in New Britain, Connecticut in 1948 and soon joined the faculty at the Hartt School of Music (later part of the University of Hartford) where he taught for more than thirty years. He died in 1996.

A man of remarkable perception, quick wit, extraordinary musical skill and impeccable taste, Marijosius was delightful and demanding, beloved of faculty and students. Loyal to a fault, he remained at Hartt even when offered the post of music director of opera at the Eastman School of Music.

His podium manner was reserved and elegant (he had the most beautiful conducting technique I have ever seen) but he could generate overwhelming emotion in performance. The audience reaction to VM's concert of complete acts from Boris Godunov and Lohengrin at Hartt in 1973, for example, threatened the stability of the auditorium’s architecture.

He had catholic tastes, exposing his students not only to the great masters of the past, but to symphonic masterworks by (then) living composers as diverse as Husa, Copland, Honegger, Britten, Ginastera and Schuman. I am honored to have studied with him as an undergraduate and later became he graduate assistant, and I am delighted that the Marijosius family has decided to honor his memory through the awarding of The American Prize.

Individuals who also wish to honor the memory of Maestro Marijosius are invited to make tax deductible donations via our website portal: http://www.theamericanprize.org/pleasedonate.html Funds donated in this way will be used to fund cash awards only, not for administration. See the website for details or send me an email at theamericanprize@gmail.com

DK

a short BIOGRAPHY

2010-11-11T12:46:00.003-08:00

This short biography of Vytautas Marijosius was provided by members of his family upon the announcement of The American Prize—Vytautas Marijosius Awards in Conducting.

***

Vytautas Marijosius (July 11, 1910 to February 17, 1996) was born in Panevezys, Lithuania. His father was a popular music teacher, an organist and a prominent choir director. His four sons inherited his musical talent, charm and quick wit, and like their father, were unforgettable to all who met them.

Vytautas’s first music teacher was his father. In 1924, he was enrolled in the Klaipeda Music School where he studied cello, piano and music theory. He became accompanist for voice students and a popular conductor of the male chorus. In 1928, Marijosius was appointed accompanist and conductor's assistant at the State Opera in Kaunas, Lithuania’s capital at the time. By age 23, he was a conductor at the State Opera.

During the next few years, the young conductor broadened his musical horizons by foreign travel and study. The Lithuanian government financed the summers of 1934 and 1935 at musical centers in Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Paris and Rome. From 1936 to 1938 he studied conducting and music theory at the Prague Conservatory in Czechoslovakia, graduating with highest honors. For contributions to Czech culture, Czechoslovakia’s president Edvard Benes would later bestow on him The Order of the White Lion, the highest award to a non-citizen. In 1938, Vytautas Marijosius was appointed Chief Conductor and Music Director of the State Opera of Lithuania and also invited to teach at the State Conservatory in Kaunas. He was 28 years old.

By 1944, Marijosius had conducted more than twenty operas in Lithuania and Latvia, (many with international guest artists) among them Verdi's Rigoletto, Otello and Il Trovatore, Puccini's’ Tosca and La Boheme, Massenet’s Manon and Werther, Wagner’s Lohenrgin, Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, Gounod's Romeo and Juliet, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Rimski-Korsakov’s Tsar Sultan and operas by Lithuanian composers. At the request of the renowned Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, Marijosius went to Paris as his accompanist. Deutsche Grammophon Gesellshaft invited Marijosius to conduct the Berlin Symphony Orchestra in recordings of Lithuanian symphonic music.

Everything came to a halt in 1944 when the Soviets occupied Lithuania. Marijosius, like others in leadership positions, was slated for deportation to Siberia. The Marijosius family fled to the West.

Until 1948, Vytautas Marijosius and his family were refugees in displaced persons camps in Austria. But there, too, Marijosius rose to the occasion and was elected spokesman for the Lithuanian refugees in all displaced persons camps administered by the American military in Austria.

As luck would have it, St. Andrews’s Lithuanian parish in New Britain, Connecticut, needed an organist. The pastor, having found out about Marijosius’s background, offered him the position. And so, on Christmas Eve of 1948, the five-person Marijosius family found a new home in the basement of St. Andrews’s rectory.

Before long, St. Andrews’s Church choir was presenting concerts of sacred music that featured soloists from the Metropolitan Opera, under Marijosius's direction. In 1949, before he had mastered English, Marijosius was taking the morning bus to Hartford to teach at the Hartt College of Music (in 1957 incorporated into the University of Hartford.) Marijosius would stay on the faculty for more than thirty years and would chair the Department of Applied Music until his retirement from the University as Professor Emeritus.

Besides a full teaching and conducting schedule at Hartt, Marijosius continued as organist at St. Andrew's and sometimes at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Hartford. He also served as a guest conductor with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the New York Symphony of the Air; he was music director and conductor for several community symphony orchestras and various state youth orchestras; he was also a conductor at numerous summer music festivals. He was an accompanist for soloists in a number of cities in the U.S. and Canada. Fluent in Russian, he interpreted for Mstislav Rostropovich and Aram Khachaturian who were both guests at Hartt. (Marijosius also knew Polish, German, and of course, Lithuanian; he also knew some Italian and loved to quote Latin sayings.)

Marijosius liked to introduce Lithuanian composers to the American public and was a conductor of the Lithuanian language productions of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino and Un Ballo in Maschera at the Lithuanian Opera of Chicago. He was instrumental in commissioning three one-act operas by Lithuanian-American composers. When one of the composers was unable to keep his commitment, Marijosius, who could be counted on to honor commitments, composed one of the operas himself. Entitled The Oath, he soon conducted all three of the new one-act operas at the Lithuanian Opera of Chicago.

In 1974, Vytautas Marijosius visited Lithuanian. The older generation of musicians welcomed him like a living legend, but he was an unknown to the young generations, because the Soviet government had forbidden citizens to even mention his name.

Vytautas Marijosius spent the sunset of his life at the convent of the Lithuanian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, in Putnam, Connecticut. He now rests in peace in the convent’s cemetery next to his beloved wife of fifty-three years, whom he outlived by nine years. He designed their headstone himself. It is elegant and one of a kind, just like the man of many talents who designed it.

Vytautas Marijosius lives on in the memories of his son and two daughters and their families and of all who know him. He also lives in the accomplishments of those whom he taught, and hopefully now will also live in the achievements of the recipients of The American Prize—Vytautas Marijosius Award in Conducting, established in his memory.

WIT: about talent

2010-06-23T14:29:00.001-07:00

After experiencing a performance by a musician with more arrogance than ability, the great Lithuanian maestro Vytautas Marijosius said:

"When you don't got talent...you don't got for a long time."