MUSIC : He Took New York : N.Y. Philharmonic Music Director Kurt Masur surprisingly turned out to be the right man for the right job at the right time

NEW YORK —  Kurt Masur wasn’t exactly an obvious choice to succeed Zubin Mehta as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

For most impractical purposes, the heir apparent to this prestigious but troubled podium seemed to be the brooding, magisterial, slightly mysterious Claudio Abbado. Then the Italian superstar answered the call to follow in the vaunted footsteps of Herbert von Karajan in Berlin.

Some hopeful rumor mills suggested that Leonard Bernstein might be lured back to the scenes of his earlier triumphs and tribulations. Others pointed, with varying degrees of conviction, to an appointment for Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, Charles Dutoit or Leonard Slatkin.

When administrative push came to realistic shove in the spring of 1990, however, all these high-powered maestros seemed to find themselves urgently occupied elsewhere. Most enlightened observers of New York’s musical fortunes--or lack of same--regarded the appointment of Masur as a stopgap measure if not a declaration of desperation.

No one doubted Masur’s competence. He was known as a solid routinier , respected as a reliable old-school professional rooted in a noble Central European tradition. He was, moreover, a comforting presence, a welcome guest conductor on cold nights in long winters of aesthetic discontent.

But a useful visitor at Lincoln Center is not necessarily an ideal permanent conductor. Masur, born in 1927, was neither exotic nor exciting. He wasn’t--or didn’t seem to be--very temperamental. He certainly wasn’t glamorous or even controversial. His name on a poster didn’t make the collective heart beat faster. The ubiquitous publicity machines would have trouble calling him charismatic .

Bearded, balding and bespectacled, he looked like Central Casting’s response to a request for a jolly German grandpa. His greatest claim to fame, admittedly an imposing one, involved his credentials as leader of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra--once Bach and Mendelssohn’s orchestra!--in what until recently had been East Germany.

Masur had actually assumed an active position of moral leadership in the unification of Germany and, for a time, had been mentioned as a candidate for a position of political authority. New Yorkers worried about the depth and extent of his commitment to America. They also worried about the toll that frequent continental commuting might take on his reportedly precarious health.

Most of all, perhaps, they worried about Masur’s ability to tame the New York Philharmonic, a ferocious beast known to slay conductors for the fun of it and chew the bones between meals.

It takes exceptional fortitude for anyone to survive the daily rigors of this besieged city. A successful music director must be something of a superman: a paragon of virtue to the often-hostile press, a cooperative ally to the stress-ridden board of directors, a democratic boss to an overworked managerial staff and, most crucial, an authoritative yet paternalistic colleague to the huge collection of disparate egos that makes up the orchestra.

Two years ago, the odds did not seem very good for Masur to triumph against the odds. But the man has triumphed. New York is celebrating the arrival of a new hero who speaks loudly and carries a little stick.

He has revitalized an institution teetering on the brink of stagnation. He has captured the imagination, and applause, of a vast, possibly jaded, potentially sophisticated audience. The Philharmonic public now includes a lot of new faces. Students, senior citizens, uninitiated adventurers and conspicuously consuming yuppies now mingle with the usual crowd of seasoned subscribers, bored bankers, loyal blue-haired ladies and garden-variety music lovers.

Contrary to most expectations, Masur turned out to be the right man for the right job at the right time. He was more than a Kapellmeister after all.

He created an instant image of competence reinforced by charm and dedication. With the help of a bright new administrative team--comprising mostly of women--he instituted progressive policies and projected an unexpected aura of enthusiasm in depth. With a little help from some Leipzig associates, he oversaw yet another attempt (remarkably successful) to improve acoustical conditions in the justly maligned Avery Fisher Hall.

He also discovered that Mehta was an easy act to follow.

When Zubin Mehta took over directorship of the New York Philharmonic in 1978, the flamboyant and controversial refugee from Los Angeles had made a similar discovery: Pierre Boulez, his predecessor, was an easy act to follow.

New York, well conditioned by Leonard Bernstein, had not taken too kindly to Boulez’s cool, intellectual approach to music-making, his championing of thorny modernist causes, his fascination with esoterica (especially Gallic esoterica), and, perhaps most important, his reluctance--call it refusal--to play the role of glamour-boy maestro. Mehta offered a refreshing jolt of theatricality, not to mention the redeeming contrast of picturesque perspiration.

He exuded energy, and looked dashing on the podium. Much of the time, he gave the public the easy musical diet it wanted.

The New York critics, however, soon became disenchanted. One read increasingly frequent complaints about superficial interpretations, about muscularity at the expense of introspection, about dull repertory choices. The Philharmonic became something of a musical glitz machine, well-oiled but a hopelessly old-fashioned anachronism.

“Under Mehta’s grim baton,” Peter Davis wrote in New York magazine last June, “the Philharmonic musicians too often sounded like a dour, disgruntled group. At best the results were diffident and mechanical, at worst downright ugly.”

“In Mr. Mehta’s tenure,” wrote Edward Rothstein in the New York Times, “the orchestral playing often became rough-edged and bombastic.”

Morale reportedly ebbed within the ensemble. People who insist on rating art as if it were a commercial commodity began to omit the New York Philharmonic from talk about America’s “Big Five” orchestras. Important broadcast and recording contracts faltered. So did box-office receipts.

Masur walked in looking very much like a maestro in shining armor. The orchestra reportedly loved him. The masses loved him. The critics came close to loving him. The Philharmonic had rediscovered warmth, sensitivity and adventure. Also--dare one say it?--relevance.

Davis offered a revealing summation: “Even the orchestra’s administration, in a rare now-it-can-be-told mood, concedes that the Philharmonic has become a happier musical community than anyone dreamed possible a year ago.”

“Once again,” wrote Tim Page in Newsday, “our cultural capital has an orchestra worthy of comparison with the finest in the world.”

On Dec. 7, the New York Philharmonic celebrated its 150th birthday. Mehta showed up to conduct a presumed specialty, Richard Strauss’ “Till Eulenspiegel.” Boulez offered Debussy’s “La Mer.” Masur chose Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, the premiere of which, not incidentally, had been played by the New York Philharmonic under another German conductor (Anton Seidl) in 1893.

“Unfortunately,” wrote Rothstein in the New York Times, “only Mr. Masur’s performance deserved the 10-minute ovation that closed the concert.”

Time had marched on.

It has been a tough winter in New York. The March blizzard turned the city into a battle zone, the frostbitten denizens at war with the hostile elements as well as with what passes here for public transportation.

Masur, who suffers from high blood pressure and circulatory problems, came down with the flu. He managed to conduct several concerts despite a fever, then had to cancel a couple of engagements.

Neither sickness nor sleet nor snow nor wind nor rain nor slush nor mush nor traffic gridlock deterred him, however, from a daunting round of concerts, rehearsals, personal appearances, managerial meetings and--perhaps most irksome--interviews before a frantic European tour (his first with the New York Philharmonic). If nothing else, the man is buoyed by solid Germanic discipline.

It is the morning after the initial storm. On the stage of an empty auditorium, the boss extends a courtly greeting to his players. He registers surprise that nearly all of them managed to get there for the rehearsal. He wears slacks and a casual shirt, and doesn’t bother to tuck in the tails. His bonhomie is counterbalanced by stern concentration. One moment he looks like a slim latter-day Falstaff; the next moment he recalls Emil Jannings as Prof. Rath in “The Blue Angel.”

The business at hand is “Till Eulenspiegel,” which, not coincidentally, the orchestra had played for Mehta a few weeks earlier. “First I just want to hear it,” Masur claims. But he stops the orchestra after six bars.

The playing is very clean, remarkably polished, a little tough. It obviously isn’t what Masur wants. Soon he is busy reshaping phrases, adjusting accents, telling illustrative anecdotes. He sings--quite beautifully. He dances. He crouches. He springs. He mimes.

“This should be more friendly,” he tells the winds, rolling Germanic R s in the back of his throat.

“I give you all my heart,” he coaxes the violins.

“I want you to smile,” he yells to no one in particular.

His purpose soon becomes clear. He is humanizing the music, adding a little wit here, a little poetry there, a little warmth everywhere.

Consciously or not, he seems to be de-Zubinizing the piece.

Kurt Masur is the rarest of rare birds: an artist who doesn’t like publicity. A representative of the press department at the New York Philharmonic warns that he avoids interviews wherever possible and, when trapped, prefers to keep the encounter brief.

He grudgingly agrees to allot an hour to an out-of-town intruder--this out-of-town intruder. Later he sends word through an embarrassed intermediary that half an hour will have to suffice. After a series of urgent pleas and unhappy protests, he returns to the original agenda. When the appointed hour arrives, however, the interview begins later than hoped and ends somewhat earlier than expected.

In his simple office backstage at Avery Fisher Hall, he greets his visitor with businesslike courtesy. Contrary to press department predictions, he rejects an offer to converse in German. The structural detours in his English sentences often suggest syntactical dislocation. Still, the talk is fast, fluent and expansive.

It soon becomes apparent that Masur doesn’t welcome interruptions or challenges. He resents questions that may hint of controversy. This man is accustomed to being in control. It may be a byproduct of his Leipzig conditioning. In any case, the jolly German grandpa isn’t quite so jolly up close.

He takes his seat behind a neatly arranged desk and brushes aside pleasantries regarding his stamina, his busy schedule, even his willingness to conduct while indisposed. “ Ja , ja , if you have a piece in your heart and feelings, it doesn’t matter.”

He expresses regret that Southern California knows him only on the basis of fleeting visits with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1987 and 1991.

“More appearances in Los Angeles didn’t occur,” he says, “because of my connection (as frequent guest conductor) with the San Francisco Symphony. The connection was very close. They didn’t want me to conduct anywhere else. Los Angeles wanted me. Ernest is a strong guy. (The reference is to Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the L.A. Philharmonic.) He came to see me, of course. But it did not work.”

Masur’s present contract with the New York Philharmonic requires exclusivity as far as U.S. engagements are concerned. He disapproves.

“This is a point maybe we overcome. It is a rule between the ‘Big Five’ orchestras, so-called. But why? This is such a big country.”

He is florid but less emphatic when asked to define the changes he has wrought in New York, and defensive regarding his predecessor. “There is a new spirit of cooperation in the orchestra,” he says. “The playing is full of poetry, full of wit. We are enjoying each other.”

He rejects the suggestion that he wished to strip “Till Eulenspiegel” of Mehta manners, or mannerisms. “You are projecting,” he says. “I never rehearse any piece with any meaning that I want to change. I am not fighting against anybody.”

What, then, is different between his perspective of music-making and Mehta’s?

“Nothing,” replies Masur, perhaps protesting too much. Still, he adds an intriguing qualifier: “I am a different guy.”

He volunteers declarations of affection. “I love Zubin so much. He is like he is, an honest musician. This is what I like. Do we have a good relationship? Absolutely. I am a very good friend of his. He is a warm-hearted man. He cares.”

Masur suggests that the only significant difference between his regime and Mehta’s involves management, not music.

“When I came I discovered tension between players and leadership. Not Zubin. He was in between. There was a disturbed relationship with everybody. All that is better now.”

He doesn’t think the New York Philharmonic is a conductor killer. “It had that reputation,” he says. “Not now.”

Most observers believe Masur is still enjoying the traditional benefits of a honeymoon with the New York Philharmonic. He objects. “It is already a marriage,” he says.

Subject closed.

Not quite. Back in February, official representatives of the Philharmonic players sent the maestro an angry letter about his last-minute decision to use a larger ensemble than originally requested for performances of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” As a result of his change of mind, numerous musicians had to give up vacation plans at short notice. They called Masur’s attitude “imperious” and warned that he was in danger of “losing the affection” of his orchestra.

The maestro does not relish discussing the imbroglio. “It was a misunderstanding,” he says with a dismissive wave.

“This is not. . . .” He pauses and tries to shift conversational gears. “This shouldn’t be mentioned. No. I don’t give it out. It was a press (report) which was not serious. There is no problem if I change as a music director the size of an orchestra. This letter was refuted by the mainstream of the orchestra. I don’t want to talk about it. It is not a story. For some press it is a story because they want to make stories.”

Masur would, no doubt, have encountered no problems of this sort in Leipzig. Asked about his powers at the Gewandhaus, he offers an innocent shrug. “What powers? I am responsible for everything.”

An anonymous member of the New York Philharmonic put it differently, according to New York Newsday: “Masur comes from a communist country--East Germany, no less--and he has no understanding of the way things are done in the West. He grew up in a tradition where a conductor doesn’t ask , he tells .”

The Gewandhaus Kapellmeister --that’s his official title--is very proud of his Leipzig connection, though he concedes that “the city is poor” and, given the current sociopolitical crises, “Germany is in trouble.” He confirms that he owes much to the approving policies of Erich Honecker and his now-discredited communist regime. According to Time magazine, Masur “had been a dutiful, some say enthusiastic supporter” of the East German president.

Masur declares that “Honecker was the most important figure in the rebuilding of the Gewandhaus. The Leipzig people gave up. I wrote a letter to Honecker, explaining that it was a shame not to rebuild the house. That is how it happened.”

He denies any personal relationship with the party official. “Honecker came each year to the opening concert of the Leipzig trade fair. We were cordial. When someone comes into your house, you greet him.”

Even though official records suggest that he never joined the party, Masur was, without doubt, the most influential musical figure in the East Zone. He is not pleased when asked if it was difficult to achieve a position of such authority in a communist state without the benefit of overt political involvement.

“You are childish,” he bristles. “Excuse me. You are like everybody who has asked those questions three years ago.

“That’s nonsense. Look, this is a country like every country also. If you were an artist of high level, they have not asked about your party membership. They have tried to get you. That is the whole point. I don’t want to explain this to you because you have enough documentation of that. In the whole Gewandhaus, there were maybe six party members.”

His agitation rises. Obviously a nerve has been struck.

“Your naivete is so breathtaking! Therefore I tell you this. To generalize these things is the construction of some press, and I don’t like to talk about that, because I have to accuse a lot of people who wanted to disturb the unification of Germany, and they did. The German press still does.

“Here is the problem: People want to say that the people of East Germany are second rate and the West Germans are ‘Deutschland uber Alles.’ German quality was on both sides. So was criminality.

“The people of East Germany were betrayed. The people believed in the beginning that Honecker was honest, trying to build up a kind of liberation. Only when Gorbachev came did the people discover that there was no liberation at all.”

Masur would rather discuss conventional interview topics: his beloved bolo ties (today’s ornament is an elephant), his ongoing binational employment, his ambitious plans for two ever-expanding orchestras, his admiration for a new generation of conductors (including Carl St.Clair of Orange County, who makes his New York Philharmonic debut next season), his happy (third) marriage to Japanese soprano Tomoko Sakurai.

No doubt, he does not want to talk about his previous wife, Irmgard. She died 20 years ago when a car he was driving crossed a highway median and crashed into an oncoming vehicle, killing its two occupants as well. German newspapers recently questioned whether the East German government had covered up the tragedy to protect its culture idol. The incident was never prosecuted.

“There’s no question that the decision was at least in human terms the right one,” Masur told an American reporter two years ago. “Perhaps it was legally questionable.”

He declared at the time that he “didn’t want to explain to somebody in the U.S. who cannot understand what really happened there.” Then he added what may be something of a Masur leitmotif:

“It’s not a question for newspapers.”

Masur is officiating at what the management calls a “Rush Hour Concert.” It begins at 6:45, ends just over an hour later, and, according to the official blurbs, “makes it possible for busy New Yorkers to catch a marvelous performance on their way home from work, or before they go out to dinner.”

The busy New Yorkers fill the house, oblivious to the violently falling sky outside. Masur, who began chatting on the podium in Leipzig decades ago, commends the audience for its dedication and courage. He offers a quick-study guide to “Till,” neatly illustrated by various first-chair virtuosos. Next, he deftly tours the compositional terrain of Dvorak’s “New World.”

Strauss’ perky tone poem sounds surprisingly brisk and brusque. It is as if the lessons of Monday’s rehearsal had been forgotten--by the conductor as well as the players. When it comes to the urgent romanticism of the subsequent symphony, however, everyone basks in sunshine.

At the end, Masur receives the sort of ovation normally reserved for a portly tenor wielding a small white tablecloth. When the cheers finally subside, everyone moves to the grand foyer for a reception. Tired players in white tie and tails share wine and cheese with elated patrons whose favored attire seems to be sweater and jeans.

On the way to his home away from home in suburban Westchester, Masur pops by for a quick visit. The crowd registers instant devotion. The maestro works the room.

New York, New York. It’s a cozy town.