Mere Excellence - unfairly-maligned conductor Kurt Masur to leave New York Philharmonic

National Review, July 23, 2001 by Jay Nordlinger

Last month, Kurt Masur finished his second-to-the-last season with the New York Philharmonic; by this time next year, he will be gone-and that's a shame. Since he became music director in 1991, Masur has made this orchestra one of the mightiest in the world, restoring a glory that had been lost. Yet he has been grossly underappreciated here, by his own management, his own players, and the city's critics. They are giving him the bum's rush-a situation that is little less than perverse.

One forgets how bad the Philharmonic really was when Masur came to town; this forgetting, moreover, is part of the general ingratitude where this conductor is concerned. Under Zubin Mehta, the orchestra was a shambles, not necessarily because of Mehta's own failings, but because the orchestra, a notoriously fickle and petulant lot, were unwilling to play for him. The Philharmonic was really something of a joke; other orchestras-and not just first-tier ones-were playing rings around them.

But then came the sturdy maestro from Leipzig. As Rudolph Giuliani led a renaissance in the city at large-over approximately these same years- Kurt Masur led a renaissance at Avery Fisher Hall. Gone were the sloppiness and apathy of former times; in were discipline, consistency, and vitality. The Philharmonic was now no joke, but a formidable band, able to hold its head high. This did not happen by accident; it happened because Masur made the group work like dogs, and insisted on proper standards-standards necessary for mere respectability, to say nothing of glory.

And yet Philharmonic folk had various complaints and quibbles, never fully explained but probably all trivial, when not outright invalid. That's when they went to give him the bum's rush: They wanted him to leave in 1998, but the conductor, duly appalled, balked, and worked out an extension of his contract through the 2001-02 season. Even with this grace period, his exit is hasty and shabby: Masur is not yet through with the orchestra, musically. Over the last couple of seasons, he and they have been better than ever, hitting a kind of stride, producing some truly memorable performances (to go with the more ordinary ones). Worse yet, the orchestra is not exactly trading up, to put it as mildly as I can: Next on the podium is Lorin Maazel. How this came about is a tale unto itself, to be left, perhaps, for another day.

The knocks against Masur? They are several, and all dumb. The first is that, at 73, he is too old. Yet age is far from a handicap in the conducting field, most maestros needing a ripening. Some of the greatest conductors of the past (and, for that matter, present) have done their best work in their seventies, or even beyond. White hair is usually a reassurance on the podium. Besides which, Lorin Maazel is 71- and his own problems have nothing to do with his date of birth.

Then it is claimed that the New York Philharmonic ought to have an American conductor. This wish, if anything, is dumber than that for youth. The notion that an American should conduct an American orchestra-or a German a German orchestra-is foreign to the ideals and reality of music. (And need I mention that most of the critics wanting, or demanding, an American would no doubt shudder at nativism, or even too conspicuous a patriotism, in any other context?) Orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic are not "American orchestras"; they are orchestras on American soil, but given over to the service of music, nationality quite aside. Sure, the New York Philharmonic may play more Copland than the French National Orchestra, and the French National Orchestra may play more Roussel than the New York Philharmonic-but this is a question of a little flavoring, nothing more serious. A conductor, anyway, should be able to conduct music of any sort, even if he has an affinity or two. Think, too, of the orchestral past in America: Szell in Cleveland, Reiner in Chicago, Stokowski and Ormandy in Philadelphia, Munch in Boston, Walter in New York-did all those foreigners do any harm? Was their leadership such an affront?

Well, the flag-wavers got their American in Lorin Maazel: yet no one would mistake him for, say, Huckleberry Finn. Not only was this conductor born in France, spending his first few years there, he has had as international a career and life as anyone in the business, or any business. Frankly, I myself had never really thought of Maazel as an American until Philharmonic brass (management, that is, not trombonists) started trumpeting him as a native son. Said the executive director, when announcing him, "He is an American, and this is the oldest American orchestra." Accurate, but utterly irrelevant. And he's not an American, for heaven's sake, he's Lorin Maazel.

The very greatest rap against Kurt Masur is that he has not programmed enough contemporary music, that he is wedded to the standard works of the Central European repertory. It simply cannot be overstated how much critics-particularly those of the New York Times-value the showcasing of contemporary music. At times, this seems their only concern, their highest criterion. It is practically a daily obsession. In ways both bald and subtle, they mark down those who program the old-the musical equivalent of Matthew Arnold's "best that has been thought and said"- and praise those who will roll out the new. The surest way for a conductor to curry favor with critics is to go modern; the surest way to irk them is to throw at them a Schumann symphony, no matter how well performed it is.