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Kurt Masur : All German program flowing like a river without passion
Masur has been away from Rome for more than 12 years, but now he decided to have an all Beethoven symphonies festival here next September. He used to be the conductor of the oldest orchestra in Europe founded by Mendelssohn, the Gewandhaus of Dresden in East Germany for many years , and led his country out of cultural isolation through many visits to the West, then ended as the conductor of the New York Philharmonic for 11 years (1991 – 2002) followed by leading the London Philharmonic and later the Orchestre National de France. He has over 100 recordings with various orchestras of works by Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Schumann, and Bruckner
His performance of the Schumann overture to the only opera he wrote Genoveva about the triumph of marital love may have been the best piece of the program. The story is not well known about the husband of Genoveva who left her to fight the Arabs with Charles Martel in 732 when they were at the gates of Tours in France.
Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto has been performed in Santa Cecilia Academy so many times sine 1902. Almost all great pianists and conductors played it in Rome such as Wilhelm Backhaus, Arthur Rubinstein, Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm Kempf, Edwin Fischer, and Maurizio Pollini. Masur directed a harmonious competition between the piano and orchestra with the Russian pianist, Elisabeth Leonskaia , born in Georgia and now residing in Vienna, but he was always in control. He slowed the tempo of the orchestra to keep the same speed of the pianist, and the result was a sumptuous tone with a pleasant soft feminine touch but it took away some of the grandeur and might of Beethoven’s music.
In Brahms he had the space all to himself, and showed us his way with interpreting this piece written in 1877. Masur proved himself as an insightful conductor with a straight forward approach, but his tempos were slow again. He seemed to dislike taking risks, or maybe he mellowed with age although he was still in good shape. His view of the sad and bright contradiction of Brahms’s second symphony was to sail with pliancy and suppleness but the smell of agony and melancholy were more obvious than the feeling of relaxation the symphony is supposed to convey.
The whole program flew like a river but without much passion.. It sounded sometimes like a boat in Coleridge’s “Rime the Ancient Mariner” as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.
His performance of the Schumann overture to the only opera he wrote Genoveva about the triumph of marital love may have been the best piece of the program. The story is not well known about the husband of Genoveva who left her to fight the Arabs with Charles Martel in 732 when they were at the gates of Tours in France.
Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto has been performed in Santa Cecilia Academy so many times sine 1902. Almost all great pianists and conductors played it in Rome such as Wilhelm Backhaus, Arthur Rubinstein, Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm Kempf, Edwin Fischer, and Maurizio Pollini. Masur directed a harmonious competition between the piano and orchestra with the Russian pianist, Elisabeth Leonskaia , born in Georgia and now residing in Vienna, but he was always in control. He slowed the tempo of the orchestra to keep the same speed of the pianist, and the result was a sumptuous tone with a pleasant soft feminine touch but it took away some of the grandeur and might of Beethoven’s music.
In Brahms he had the space all to himself, and showed us his way with interpreting this piece written in 1877. Masur proved himself as an insightful conductor with a straight forward approach, but his tempos were slow again. He seemed to dislike taking risks, or maybe he mellowed with age although he was still in good shape. His view of the sad and bright contradiction of Brahms’s second symphony was to sail with pliancy and suppleness but the smell of agony and melancholy were more obvious than the feeling of relaxation the symphony is supposed to convey.
The whole program flew like a river but without much passion.. It sounded sometimes like a boat in Coleridge’s “Rime the Ancient Mariner” as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.
