Kurt Masur died on 19.12.15

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Very, very sad news
A great loss to music, and we have mustn't forget that without him, there might have been a great bloodshed in 1989 and German Unification would have been much more difficult, with violence and likely a much later fall of the Berlin Wall

RIP Kurt Masur

Roehre, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra visited Llangefni c.1971. Music students at Bangor were persuaded to go. I'd never heard of the quite young conductor at the time.

[EdgeleyRob]

So sad.
I treasure his Mendelssohn

RIP

[Suffolkcoastal]

Great Conductor & human being


RIP

[Dave2002]

A very sad loss of a great musician and someone whose achievements were not only restricted to music.

RIP

[richardfinegold]

I saw him lead the NYP on tour in Chicago on a bitterly cold January night, with the 5 ths of Beethoven and Shostakovich , then encores for the Strings with the finale of the Tchaikovsky Serenade For Strings and then the brass did a Dixieland piece while marching New Orleans style. It was a weeknight and I remember that I couldn't sleep even though it was late because the concert was so stimulating.
I have friend who is the Music Director at a College here who was invited to be with KM at a rehearsal. He flew to San Francisco and said that KM chided the SFSO after the first run through and told them their playing was boring and emotionless. My friend said the outcome was completely different at the Concert and he marveled at how KM was able to get the musicians to play exactly as he wanted.
I have his Mendelssohn set on Eterna, his Brahms on lp, his Beethoven on SACD, all with The Gewandhaus. They are all excellent. His Shostakovich Babi Yar with New York is my favorite. KM's Shostakovich tends to sound a bit Teutonic but I think he had a real affinity for the Composer.
It is ironic to read the affectionate eulogies of New York critics. He was at first greatly welcomed as a needed corrective but after a few years they were grumbling that he was a dull unimaginative kapellmeister. It wasn't long into the Loren Maisel era that KM began to be missed

[aeolium]

I only saw him conduct once live, at a Prom with his beloved Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, a memorable occasion. As Suffolkcoastal said, a great conductor and human being.

RIP

[Barbirollians]

Very sad news - his Beethoven overtures record is going on shortly . That 1989 Beethoven 9 at the Proms is one of the greatest performances of anything I have ever heard .

[Colonel Danby]

Kurt Masur was a very fine conductor and will be sorely missed. On a personal note, I was fortunate to be on the front row of Proms concert given by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra led by the maestro, perhaps late 80s in Mendelssohn in his incidental music for 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and we thought it might be a good idea to organise a collection for the composer's todhaus in the city which was in danger of falling down. In a rare inspiration of thought, I dreamed up the shout (as one does at the Albert Hall) "Arena to Promenaders, as Mendelssohn has raised the roof, so raise the roof for Mendelssohn'. We made a packet in contributions that night in the hall, and the late lamented Ken Johnson held up a bucket to Masur and he was only too pleased to give his bit for the fund. A very special night.

RIP Kurt

[gurnemanz]

Kurt Masur played a huge part in my early concert-going and I can't resist making a contribution here, echoing the above tributes – with a few reservations. I was in Leipzig for four years in the early 70s, teaching English at the University and getting married (long story!). My future wife and I went to many Gewandhaus concerts – just based on the Gewandhaus programmes we kept from this time. I've just checked and it was 31, of which Masur conducted 21. I was a young man and still fairly new to live classical music, so in most cases I was seeing the works live for the first time under his baton and the debt we owe to him is enormous. We had many great evenings at the old Kongresshalle before the new Gewandhaus was built, with some great soloists, including Emil Gilels, Annie Fischer, Pierre Fournier, a young Gidon Kremer, but surprisingly few first rank guest conductors – Kurt Sanderling is in there.

I second all the points made above but can well remember that he was not universally adored in Leipzig. We knew several insiders in the Gewandhaus setup. He was thought by some to be rather too possessive with the orchestra, not keen on letting guest conductors in. His programming was thought to be rather conservative – compared, say, to Herbert Kegel at the city's other main orchestra, the Radio Symphony Orchestra. Some people, I remember, told me they preferred going down the road to at the Dresden Staatskapelle who were playing better under Herbert Blomstedt.

No one is perfect and his personal reputation was somewhat coloured for many DDR people by the never fully clarified circumstances of a most unfortunate car accident in which his Mercedes crashed into a Trabant. This is mentioned in the Spiegel obituary. His wife and the driver of the Trabant were killed. Certainly not the time or place to go into detail but Spiegel gave some in their reporting of his appointment to New York.

Danke für alles und ruhe in Frieden

[bluestateprommer]

David Nice has a thoughtful tribute to KM in The Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/20/kurt-masur

Interestingly, DN makes a comment that seems to jibe with gurnemanz's impression above about the Leipzig situation, in Masur's later years with the LPO:

"Within the orchestra [LPO], similar accusations were heard to those of New York Philharmonic musicians – not least that Masur always wanted things his way, and was not open to discussion..."

But then Nice goes on to say:

"Despite the New York clashes, Masur was an orchestral management’s dream of what the principal conductor should be: a hard worker with a genuine concern for broadening horizons. It was a daunting experience, for example, to suddenly see his face among the audience of those preconcert talk events vital to an orchestra’s funding. He took the educational aspect – an essential brief of any orchestra operating today – very seriously indeed, and regularly appeared with the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. For a solid mix of the old and the new, there was no conductor of his generation to match him."