The New York Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, November 8, 2012
The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2012
A slightly messy concert, but a consistently exciting one, too. After I posted this review on Facebook, a friend pointed out that Mr. Masur conducted only the second half of the program on Friday evening – cause for concern until the New York Philharmonic revealed on its Tumblr that Mr. Masur had been delayed by a traffic jam, prompting Philharmonic assistant conductor Case Scaglione's unplanned subscription-concert debut. I've read no reports of Saturday's concert, leading me to assume that everything went as planned. Masur's second program, running this Thursday through Saturday, features Brahms's Third and Fourth Symphonies.
And here I'll point out the virtues of beneficent editorial intervention: I did not see the announcement of Parkinson's Disease on Kurt Masur's website (nor Norman Lebrecht's related blog post afterward), and thus did not mention it in the review that I filed. The line was added by my editor, and rightly so. It certainly explained the slight but noticeable tremors in Mr. Masur's left hand, something I felt uncomfortable mentioning without a context that I lacked.
Comments