The Boston Globe
January 18, 2009

Masur returns, on a mission for Mendelssohn

Jeremy Eichler

The German maestro Kurt Masur returns this week to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He is probably best known to American audiences as the former music director of the New York Philharmonic, from 1991 to 2002. To Europeans, he will always be linked to the venerable Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, which he led for more than two decades beginning in 1970. But beyond his musical accomplishments, Masur, now 81, enjoys a reputation as a respected humanist for his role in keeping the peace between protesters and government troops at a critical moment in Leipzig in October 1989, just one month before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

During his tenure at the New York Philharmonic, his unvarnished autocratic style ruffled many feathers, but he nevertheless managed to renovate the orchestra's sound and improve its discipline. Most of all, he projected an unrelenting faith, honed over decades lived under both fascist and communist regimes, in the nobility and moral grandeur of the Austro-German masterpieces that form the core of his repertoire. He spoke with the Globe from Paris, where he has led the Orchestre Nationale de France.

Q. For your upcoming appearances with the BSO, you've chosen an all-Mendelssohn program. Can you tell us why?

A. Feb. 3 is his 200th birthday, so I am doing all-Mendelssohn programs all over the world. I am president of the Mendelssohn Foundation of Leipzig. We have rebuilt the last house where Mendelssohn lived and died. I am also very strongly connected to Mendelssohn as the music director of Gewandhaus because he was the music director in his time.

Q. Mendelssohn's music feels like it's everywhere, and yet at the same time he's often treated with a bit of condescension, as though he's not as serious as others in the Central European tradition. Do you think Mendelssohn is underrated?

A. Yes! We have been fighting that since founding the Mendelssohn Foundation. Mendelssohn very often is not taken seriously enough by interpreters, including many conductors. People say, it's very nice and pleasant and comfortable music. But you have to work hard to make them realize that Mendelssohn was such a fiery spirit. He burned on both ends like a candle. You cannot help but be astonished if you see the chamber music, the psalms, and the Octet, composed at the age of 16 - it's one of the great masterpieces of the whole literature. This is why we are fighting like lions that Mendelssohn takes his place alongside Beethoven, Bach, and the great composers of the 20th century.

Q. Of course, during your own childhood in Germany, Mendelssohn [as a baptized Jew] was officially regarded quite differently. Do you have memories of his music during that period?

A. Yes, growing up as a boy I played the piano, and when I was 10 years old, my piano teacher gave me a piece by Mendelssohn. But she told me to close the window when I practice because this music was forbidden. It was the Nazi time.

Q. Even after the war, was there a lingering feeling that this music was not properly German?

A. This still exists in the minds of some people. But if you fight to make the people understand what kind of spirit he was, they learn to feel it, and then they are all astonished. They realize you can compare, for example his "Elijah," in its morality - in the reasons why he made music - to [Beethoven's] "Missa Solemnis."

Q. After your political involvement in Leipzig, your name was suggested as a potential candidate for president of the reunited Germany. Did you ever regret that you did not pursue a career in politics?

A. No. Look, I tell you, it was a very strange feeling for me because the people there did not trust [leaders] anymore. I was happy that they trusted musicians because the worst thing we could do was play the wrong notes! But I thought that I'm not so bad a conductor that I should become a politician.

Q. You led the orchestra for two decades in East Germany. With daily life as it was under the communist regime, did music mean something different than it did in the West?

A. In East Germany, culture of this kind was much more necessary for the people to have a good life, and to have a good feeling in that life. The political pressure meant there were very strong rules about the arts - the same as it was in Russia. The people could not read a lot of good books, but I remember the Gewandhaus Orchestra was always sold out. If I tell you one story, you won't believe it. I remember in our office where they sold the tickets, they had one subscriber, a young girl who always came to buy subscriptions for her grandparents. After the third year, our cashier asked her, 'Why doesn't your grandfather ever come himself?' Then the girl started to cry and said, 'He died already three years ago, and we didn't want to lose the subscription.' Could you imagine such a thing!

Q. Do you feel nostalgic for that era?

A. No, definitely not. For me, it was not a golden time. It was a very hard time. I was three years unemployed, I had no orchestra, and I suffered. But if you went to Moscow at that time, if you heard the Gewandhaus, or the orchestras in Prague and Budapest - my God, what orchestras those were. They had very, very high standards. We had personal problems with borders - for several years I was forbidden to travel - but it also meant you had more time to develop yourself, to find out as an artist what you want to do, and what you really can do.

Q. Did you find conducting in the West to be a difficult transition?

A. I wouldn't say it was difficult. Every orchestra is different. If you want to bring them to your kind of imagination, you had to work very differently in Italy and in France and in Russia.

Q. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

A. You are in Boston, yes?

Q. Yes.

A. Boston for me was a wonderful place. The European traditions have a very calculated [specific] sound. On the other hand, the Boston Symphony was able to create the sound of unbelievably different styles very strongly and very convincingly. I am always coming back with great joy because Boston is a very special city, with a great education, also of the audience.

Q. I will try to pass that along.