2009-05-21 02:14:03 -

WASHINGTON (AP) - British composer Nicholas Maw, known for his opera based on the novel «Sophie's Choice» and for a nearly 100-minute symphony, has died. He was 73.
The composer died of heart failure and complications from diabetes and dementia in his Takoma Park, Maryland, home May 19, said Norman Ryan, the New York representative for Maw's publisher, Faber Music.
Maw had lived in the Washington area for more than 20 years. He taught music composition at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1998 until last year.
His neo-Romantic, post-modernist compositions were praised for their rich textures. Maw's creations «forged a musical language which is truly vibrant and sensuous, and which borrows both from the old and the new,» wrote music scholar David Cooper in the «International Dictionary of Opera.
Maw, who studied clarinet and piano as a child in England, finished in his Takoma Park home what became one of his best-known works: «Odyssey.» The 96-minute symphony opened in London in 1987. It took Maw 14 years to write and is believed to be the longest continuous orchestral music ever composed.
His final major work was an opera based on the 1979 William Styron novel «Sophie's Choice,» about a Polish-Catholic woman haunted by the memories of her experiences at Auschwitz. The opera debuted in London in 2002.
The year before, violinist Joshua Bell's interpretation of Maw's «Violin Concerto» won a Grammy Award. Maw had written it for Bell, who performed the piece worldwide.

Maw is survived by his companion of 24 years, Maija Hay of Takoma Park, two children from a marriage that ended in divorce, two sisters and two grandchildren.