Word: conductor
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...America's most fractious ensemble: "A lot of us think, Why not send our worst enemy there and finish him off once and for all?" For the past 1 1/2 years, ever since Mehta announced he would leave his post in 1991, it has sometimes seemed doubtful whether any conductor could be found to take over the Philharmonic, either worst enemy or best friend. Various high-powered names were floated, among them Leonard Bernstein, who has already served one tour of duty as the orchestra's head, and Claudio Abbado, who last year disappointed his supporters by taking the Berlin...
Last week, in a stunning surprise, the Philharmonic's quest finally came to an end with the selection of a relative unknown: East German maestro Kurt Masur, currently the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Masur, 62, is a Kapellmeister in the best Central European tradition, and it was exactly this quality that appealed to the Philharmonic's search committee, which for the first time also included some of the orchestra's musicians. "He had an institutional commitment to the Gewandhaus that he was prepared to bring to New York," said orchestra chairman Stephen Stamas. Translation: Masur, whose five-year...
What kind of conductor is New York getting? As he showed last week in leading the Gewandhaus Orchestra though performances of Beethoven's Fidelio and Bach's St. Matthew Passion at the Salzburg Easter Festival in Austria, Masur is capable of drawing passionate, powerful playing from his musicians. Neither a disciplinarian nor one of the boys, Masur favors a let-us-reason- together approach that prizes loyalty and enthusiasm over virtuosity. Not surprisingly, his repertoire is centered on the classics from Mozart to Mahler, which he conducts with short punchy gestures, usually without a baton. In Leipzig...
...deceptions. Hecht should have written Sturges'; he would have wrung high irony from the story of a gallivanting rich boy who grew up to be the top writer-director in pictures. And one of the blithest. "All I do is wave a little wand a little," purred the orchestra conductor in Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours, "and out comes the music." For five glorious years, 1940-44, Sturges waved his wand and out came words and pictures. Nothing but Hollywood's most distinctive satires: The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. So rent the movies...
Kurt Masur, conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and a leader in last year's peaceful revolution, is named music director of the Philharmonic, America's most fractious ensemble...