by Geoff Brown
SOME conductors are so in love with spectacle that they twirl like ballerinas. Not maestro Kurt Masur. His body sways and the arms coax, but his legs stay put. He anchors the music in solid ground, mindful of the notes laid down on the page. Yet nothing stolid results: on Sunday night an expectant crowd was swept away by his handling of Brahms's German Requiem, the most comforting and humane of choral masterpieces.
Masur's appointment as the London Philharmonic Orchestra's principal conductor is still one year off (he begins in earnest next September). Yet in this opening concert of the LPO's new season he seemed already in harness, inspiring the players with firm authority and stirring the Royal Opera Chorus into singing of incandescent force. At moments the chorus needed extra weight to punch out Brahms's contrapuntal textures, but no one present will ever forget the spine-tingling moment when 68 mouths became as one on the words "Schmerz und Seufzen", sorrow and sighing fleeing away in the face of joyful, everlasting life.
Like many conductors now, Masur takes a brisk approach to Brahms's work. Slow tempos used to turn the piece into a stone colossus, to be worshipped from a distance. Masur sticks close to the original metronome markings, warming even the saddest, most reflective passages, underlining that Brahms the non-believer was more concerned with finding consolation in death than fearing the Day of Judgment.
The soloists played their part in maintaining a human scale. An earthier tone from Christiane Oelze might have strengthened the solace in the tender fifth movement, written in memory of Brahms's mother, but her liquid, silver-toned soprano brought its own kind of peace. And the baritone Thomas Quasthoff was simply superb: his humble urgings in the third movement's reminder of man's mortality could bring tears to the eyes, and did so.
Masur and Brahms were only part of the evening's spectacle. In the first half, the London Philharmonic Youth Orchestra took to the stage with conductor Ilan Volkov for Dvorák's interlinked overtures In Nature's Realm, Carnival and Othello. The ultimate in lustre and balance may have been lacking, but the students worked with fire and sensitivity.
The Times - 22-9-1999