PSU Magazine Fall 1987

International recognition may be around the corner for composer Tomas Svoboda, but that's not what really drives him. by Cynthia D. Stowell H e was doing fingering exercises on the piano by age three. He started his Opus 1, a piano piece, when he was nine. His first symphony, completed by the time he was 14, was performed by a major European orchestra two years later. What musical prodigy comes to mind? Mozart, perhaps? This childhood sensation was Tomas Svoboda, better known at Port– land State as a popular professor of music theory and composition. Now 47, the composer patiently stands once again on the threshold of interna– tional recognition. He knows it will come, just as he knew it was coming thirty years ago in Czechoslovakia. The signs are there. Seven major North American orchestras have per– fomed his work. His fourth symphony will be released on a recording by the Louisville Orchestra this year. He is tackling a major commission for a pianist of international stature. His name is increasingly on the lips of important conductors and musicians. "He's wired for it," said Svoboda's publisher and friend Thomas Stang– land ('74). 'Tm not a betting man - except on Tomas. He's a sure thing." But why so many years after his youthful storming of the Prague music circles? Like one of his compositions, the life of Tomas Svoboda has been full of contrasting coloration, changing tempos, surprise elements and tradi- PSU MAGAZINE PAGE4 tional melodies all bound together by an inner harmony, a certain clarity of voice. Perhaps when the piece is over, we wi ll better understand some of the choices the composer made, but in the meantime we deli ght in the seeming contradictions, the dramatic hesita– tions, the joyful intensity. Born in Paris in 1939 during the Nazi invasion, Tomas was immediately whisked away by his parents to unoc– cupied southern France, his transpor– tation the basket of a tandem bicycle. His father, a mathematician and pianist, found that the only certain way to console the infant Tomas on hungry nights was to play a recording of Mozart's Eine klei,ne Nachtmusik. " It was total medicine for quietness," said Svoboda, who credits his parents with