THE NEW YORK TIMES
February 20, 2002

FROM THE YOUNG, NOTHING LESS THAN FULL COMMITMENT
By Anthony Tommasini

Kurt Masur has long felt that part of his responsibilities as music director of the New York Philharmonic should include working with young musicians in the area. During his 11-year tenure he has given of his time to the Juilliard School, his Lincoln Center neighbor, in particular, doing regular open readings with the orchestra, concerts at Alice Tully Hall and occasionally high-profile concerts at Avery Fisher Hall, including Monday night's.

This program - Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" ballet music, Bartok's Viola Concerto and Beethoven's Second Symphony - was the last he will conduct while holding his Philharmonic post.

Prior to the Beethoven performance, Joseph W. Polisi, the president of Juilliard, presented Mr. Masur with a certificate of merit in gratitude for his work. Accepting the award, Mr. Masur confessed to having felt some trepidation before the concert.

"I treated the orchestra very badly during rehearsals," he said. But, he added, he thinks the hard work paid off because "the spirit of the 'Romeo' and the Bartok really came over."

And how. When working with student orchestras, it has never been Mr. Masur's way to expect anything less than full commitment and high quality. In the Prokofiev, the sheer energy and contagious involvement the musicians displayed were exhilarating, as in the ferocious account of the "Death of Tybalt" music. But when called for, as in the luminous, quietly suspenseful "Balcony Scene," the playing was lovely, with misty colors and shimmering textures.

In the Bartok Viola Concerto the soloist was Kyle Armbrust, a 21-year-old Chicago native studying in Juilliard's undergraduate program who had won a school competition to gain this opportunity. He gave an assured, brilliant and stylish account of this seldom-heard work, which Bartok left somewhat unfinished and almost totally unorchestrated at his death in 1945. (It was completed by his Hungarian colleague Tibor Serly, a composer and conductor.)

Mr. Masur rejects the idea that Beethoven's Second Symphony is some lighter, late-Classical-period work. In this charged, incisive performance the symphony came across as a feisty work that deserves a place alongside the one that followed, the "Eroica."

At its conclusion, the orchestra musicians themselves led the audience in grateful ovations for Mr. Masur.