In an interview
with the Paris newspaper Le Monde last week, outgoing New York
Philharmonic music director Kurt Masur took issue with his critics in New York,
in and out of the orchestra's administration. He said that he had been unfairly
called "a Communist, an anti-Semite, a dictator."
Masur said that he had a clash with Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic's executive director, before she left for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, after "a member of the administrative board made remarks in bad taste, in public" suggesting that the conductor had a German taste for power.
"This phony controversy," he said, prompted one of the orchestra's soloists, "of Jewish origin," to make a public defense of Masur. "That cost him, but his declaration had much weight," the German-born conductor added. He did not mention any names in the interview.
Masur said that a positive New York Times review of his last concert by critic Bernard Holland "seems to contradict the nauseating remarks he had made until now about me and my tenure in New York." In a piece published in 1997, Holland had called Masur's disciplined style as conductor as "too German" for New York, and had dubbed him a passing guest of the orchestra.
The conductor defended his policies at the helm of the Philharmonic. "In an orchestra," he said, "it's the musical director who should have the real power, the artistic power, which he shares with his musicians. I have never done anything against my musicians, even if often I had to lead them against their will."
In September, Masur will become musical director of the Orchestre National de France, replacing Charles Dutoit, while Lorin Maazel will replace him at the podium of the New York Philharmonic.
Asked if he foresaw any problems having to share programming with René Koering, the musical director of the Orchestra de Radio France, Masur told Le Monde he didn't think so.
"I think everything will be alright. There is enough music for two orchestras. René knows my open spirit — he knows I have a great interest in contemporary music, that I have created a number of works. He also knows I have 250 scores in my repertory that I know by heart and that I have no intention, at this stage of my career, of learning dozens of rare works that I would only play once," Masur said.
Before his recent kidney transplant, Masur said, he had
been "slowly poisoning" himself and was "in great danger." Now, he said, "I feel
like I was born again — quite in shape and ready to begin this new
adventure, here in Paris."
