Transformative former New York Philharmonic conductor Kurt Masur Dies at 88.
Kurt Masur, the music director emeritus of the New York Philharmonic, who was credited with transforming the orchestra from a sullen, lackluster ensemble into one of luminous renown, died on Saturday in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 88.
The death, from complications of Parkinson’s disease, was announced by the Philharmonic, which said it would dedicate its Saturday night performance of Handel’s Messiah to Masur’s memory.
Masur, born in Brieg, in the Silesian region of Germany (today Brzeg, Poland), was the Philharmonic’s music director from 1991 to 2002. When he took its helm, the orchestra had declined from its zenith under Leonard Bernstein, the Philharmonic’s music director from 1958 to 1969. It was roundly considered to be a world-class ensemble in name only, its playing grown slipshod, its players fractious and discontented, its recording contracts often going unrenewed.
“I remember when I asked one of the orchestra committee after my appointment here, ‘Why me?’ ” Masur told the newspaper Scotland on Sunday in 1999. “He said, ‘Because you do not fear orchestras.’ ”
Masur made his formal debut as the Philharmonic’s music director on September 11, 1991. But he had impressed the critics even before his tenure began. Over the 11-year marriage that followed, Masur would bring to the Philharmonic a restored musical vigor; new recording contracts and regular radio exposure; a populist approach that helped expand its graying, rarefied audience; and a determination to improve the dubious acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall, its longtime home.
He also brought to the podium the ardent conviction that music-making was a moral act that could heal the world. It was a belief he had put into spectacular public practice in 1989, when Communism in East Germany began to crumble and he used his singular renown there to avert bloodshed. Masur would put it into practice again, memorably and movingly, in the premiere performance of John Williams' theme for Schindler's List in 1994, and for a New York ravaged by the attacks of September 11, 2001.
At: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/arts/music/kurt-masur-new-york-philharmonic-conductor-dies.html?_r=0
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