home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- <text id=91TT2135>
- <title>
- Sep. 23, 1991: View Points:Music
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 23, 1991 Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 73
- MUSIC
- An Ambassador Arrives
- </hdr><body>
- <p>By Christopher Porterfield
- </p>
- <p> All the right protocol was observed. KURT MASUR, making
- his first appearance as music director of the New York
- Philharmonic (succeeding Zubin Mehta), rightly judged that the
- occasion was more ceremonial than musical. So the German maestro
- began with a polite bow to America, conducting two short pieces
- by contemporary composer John Adams and a set of Old American
- Songs by Aaron Copland (winningly sung by baritone Thomas
- Hampson). Then Masur, who has led Leipzig's venerable Gewandhaus
- Orchestra since 1970, reached under his tailcoat and produced
- his own credential: an authoritative, warmly expressive version
- of Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 7. This served to remind the
- Lincoln Center faithful (and a national TV audience) that his
- roots lie deep in the European romantic tradition. Clearly
- Masur, 64, a one-man back-to-basics movement, intends to move
- the brilliant, erratic, often fractious Philharmonic more into
- line with that tradition--diplomatically, of course. Judging
- from the way the musicians played for him, they seem eager to
- get there.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-