New York Gets a Revolutionary

By Michael Walsh

Back before 1978, when he was appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic, Zubin Mehta made an infamous remark about 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 Philharmonic post instead.

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 contract begins with the 1992-93 season -- the Philharmonic's 150th anniversary -- is no glamorous international jet-setter but a solid and sober musician who will give the Philharmonic some badly needed attention and stability.

"The Philharmonic has some fantastic musicians," says Masur, who has guest-conducted the New Yorkers nearly two dozen times since 1981. "But this idea of a musical family that we have at the Gewandhaus I miss somehow. I want the musicians to have the feeling that they are at home, that they are playing together, that they are at the musical center of that big city." After seeing the Leipzig orchestra through its 250th birthday in 1993-94, Masur is expected to make New York his principal base.

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 he led as many as 90 performances a year, including a healthy dollop of new music, mostly commissioned from East German composers. Says Masur: "I always told our audiences, 'You read not only Goethe and Schiller but contemporary writers as well, so you should expect the same in music.'

Masur has spent his whole career in East Germany, studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, playing a bit of jazz piano in his youth and working his way up the ladder with stops in Dresden, Mecklenburg and East Berlin's famed Komische Oper. In person, he cuts a stern, uncompromising figure, like something out of the Reformation: tall, burly, bluff, bearded, with deep-set, dark-blue eyes that coolly appraise the world from beneath a heavy brow and a high forehead. In appearance, he could be Martin Luther's cousin, bravely battling a corrupt and sinful establishment. In fact, last fall Masur unexpectedly found himself helping to conduct the peaceful revolution that brought down his country's Communist government, fortissimo.

Like Luther's, Masur's conversion was unexpected. For years the conductor had been a dutiful, some say enthusiastic, supporter of Erich Honecker's regime. That all changed on a warm July day last year when the State Security police arrested a Leipzig street busker for disturbing the peace. "A doctor I knew wrote to me and said that if the police were now arresting musicians, where would they stop?" recalls Masur, who as the leader of the oldest orchestra in Germany has a high public profile in his city. Masur protested to the Leipzig cultural minister and later opened the doors of the Gewandhaus concert hall for a public meeting with the authorities in August.

When police cracked down hard on a Leipzig demonstration, Masur could no longer hide his sympathies. Together with some of the city authorities and a priest, he drafted an appeal for nonviolence that was read aloud in the four main Leipzig churches in October. "We said that we six spoke with the voice of the people, and we asked that no force be used," recalls Masur. "The tension was incredible. At any moment, anyone could have thrown a rock and then . . ." No rock was thrown. The march went on. The police backed down. The protests spread. One month later, the Berlin Wall crumbled.

For a time there was talk that Masur might follow the path blazed by other artists -- Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia the most prominent -- and stand for office. But the conductor's political career was over. "I am a musician, not a politician," says Masur. "I make my statements in music." Now American audiences will have a chance to hear what he has to say.