PULITZER-WINNING COMPOSER PERFORMS HERE

If the Prague Conservatory hadn't accepted him during World War II, Karel Husa would have been sent to work in a munitions factory in Dresden, Germany. Still, his father wanted to know if he had any talent.

"Wouldn't you rather have him spend the war in the conservatory?" his teacher asked.

More than half a century later, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer's eyes twinkle and he laughs merrily at the misgivings of his father, who wanted him to become a civil engineer.

Husa conducted a free concert of his work by the Southeast Missouri State University Choir and the Southeast Symphonic Wind Ensemble at Academic Auditorium Thursday night. About 150 people attended.

In introducing him, Dr. Robert Fruehwald noted that few people who lived 200 years ago actually had the good fortune to hear a concert by Beethoven. "Tonight, we are the lucky ones," he said.

The Czech-born composer won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his introspective String Quartet No. 3. But Husa is better known for "Music for Prague 1968," an anguished "manifest" inspired by the Soviet Union's brutal invasion of his homeland and suppression of subsequent protests.

In a pre-concert lecture, he said he wrote the piece in four days. The speed, he said, was possible because "I was in such disdain for what had happened.

"... A small country has a right for freedom and shouldn't be violated by someone else."

Thursday night's concert concluded Husa's week-long residency at Southeast, a period in which he lectured to classes and appeared on KRCU-FM. An evening of his chamber works was presented at Old St. Vincent Church Tuesday.

Husa was born in Prague in 1921. He studied at the Prague Conservatory and Academy of Music. He also studied at the National Conservatory and Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris.

In 1949, the new Communist government in Czechoslovakia revoked his passport, turning him into a refugee. In Paris he studied with the famed Nadia Boulanger and met Stravinsky and Poulenc at her open houses.

He came to the United States in 1954 to take a position at Cornell University, where he remained until his retirement.

Now 77, he has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, including a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995 he received the Czech republic's highest honor, the Medal of Merit, First Degree.

He is now at work on a piece for the Chicago Symphony, and afterward will write music to celebrate the opening of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's new concert hall in 2002.

After the fall of the Communist government in 1989, the end of 40 years of exile for him, Husa returned to Prague to conduct the State Symphony Orchestra's first performance of "Music for Prague 1968." This occurred in the hall where he once stood to hear concerts as a student.

Afterward, he said, "The most touching applause came from those students."