CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
April 1, 2011

Kurt Masur makes a triumphant return to the CSO

Andrew Patner

Riccardo Muti is back in Chicago; by all accounts, his initial rehearsals for next week's concert performances of Verdi's “Otello” have gone extremely well and have lighted an additional and happy fire under the players of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

This good news probably played a part Thursday night at Symphony Center in the exceptional performance of Bruckner's Fourth Symphony under the long-experienced, though now trembling, hands of guest conductor Kurt Masur, now 83. A confident group of musicians responded to the demanding and highly individual account of the German guest, making his first appearances with the CSO in seven seasons.

For 40 years, Chicago has been home to a series of masterly Bruckner interpreters whose takes have been by turn muscular, emotionally keen, analytical and mystical. Masur's version might be called elemental. Rather than stripping away the work of others, he seemed to rebuild the massive E-Flat Major symphony (in the 1878-80 version) from the ground up, making considered use of the CSO's technical abilities. It was highly fitting that, at the end of this 70-minute journey, Masur asked each section to take its own bow and led the applause for them.

Masur is a survivor — of Nazism, involuntary service as a teenager in the Wehrmacht, an Allied POW camp, a hand condition that ended his piano career, East German Communism (including periods where he was banned from conducting), a deadly car accident in which his wife was killed along with others, clinical depression, the senseless dismissal from the music directorship of the New York Philharmonic (which he had restored to musical health in the 1990s), a kidney transplant and now the tolls of age, which have left this once physically commanding figure gaunt and shaky but still tall with ramrod posture.

Perhaps all of these experiences contributed to a remarkably gentle and singing playing of the sprawling score, with even the mighty CSO brass sections fully integrated and never domineering. Daniel Gingrich's haunting horn solos both captured and set the mood, with flute Mathieu Dufour and clarinet John Bruce Yeh captaining the chameleonic winds while the strings made the whole piece seem to float on air. The occasion seemed almost historic.

Maybe Masur picked the opening A Major Mozart Piano Concerto, No. 23, K. 488, exactly 225 years old, to remind players and audience of the Austrian tradition of careful construction and craftsmanship that is also there in Bruckner for those who understand him. But with an orchestra and an audience used to Daniel Barenboim, Mitsuko Uchida and in recent years, Paul Lewis,in this repertoire, the French-Canadian soloist Louis Lortie again proved too lightweight and monochromatic for a work that has much more to it than his clockwork run-through showed. Meanwhile, Yeh and Gregory Smith made beautiful work of the clarinet parts. But this night belonged to Bruckner.