Reviewed is the London Philharmonic Orchestra Masur performance at the National Concert Hall, DublinNCH, Dublin
Beethoven a Symphony No 6 (Pastoral). Symphony No 7.
Back in 1986, in the days when the Belfast Festival took serious music a lot more seriously than it does now, Kurt Masur gave three concerts with the Leipzig Agendas Orchestra.
Ten years later, he was back in Ireland again, to conduct the National Concert Hall debut of the New York Philharmonic. And on Thursday, he returned to the NCH, this time to bring to the NCH/The Sunday Times International Orchestral Series a flavour of his current Beethoven symphony cycle with the London Philharmonic.
Masur is not the sort of man from whom one would expect a controversial Beethoven performance. If you want your Beethoven, as it were, re-lit to match modern, period performance (or any other taste), you will always have to look elsewhere.
He is a traditionalist, an intelligent, enquiring one, but a traditionalist, nonetheless.
The sense of tradition lay particularly heavily on the German music of his Belfast performances, with the distinctive, rather overweight, sonority of the Leipzig orchestra playing a crucial role in effectively narrowing the expressive range of the music-making.
The Bruckner playing of the New York Philharmonic seemed to show a remarkable habitability of finger and lip that didn't translate as readily as might have been expected into the spiritual world that is so uniquely Bruckner's.
In Beethoven's Pastoral and Seventh symphonies on Thursday, Masur and the London Philharmonic showed an altogether more productive meeting of mind, sharpness of physical response and togetherness of musical spirit.
Masur is an observant, even a meticulous, conductor of Beethoven. But his manner on Thursday was the opposite of the interpreter who parades his knowledge like a teacher at a blackboard, drawing attention to all of his special points.
The Masur approach was, by contrast, that of a character actor, subsuming himself in his role so that it would almost not occur to you to imagine he could ever behave otherwise.
The genial, unwound well-being of his manner in the Pastoral Symphony may have toned down the impact of the "Storm" movement somewhat.
But he traded characters after the interval for the drive of the Seventh Symphony, and kept details of articulation in clear focus, whether the music called for propulsive urgency or movement of milder energy.
The orchestra's response was fine in detail, there was plenty of air in the phrasing, and the music didn't feel leant-on for effects that were not there to be yielded.
It's not often you get to hear live performances of Beethoven symphonies that fall so pleasingly on the ear and yet seem to capture the music's essential expressive charge.
