Guest conductor Kurt Masur, in town to lead symphony, finds time for young musicians, too

Two or three years ago, when the Seattle Symphony Orchestra began discussing with the legendary conductor Kurt Masur a guest role during SSO's 2009-10 season, Masur insisted on a condition that had nothing to do with the program of Mozart and Bruckner he will lead at Benaroya Hall tonight through Saturday.

Masur, the 82-year-old music director emeritus of the New York Philharmonic and music director for life of the Orchestre National de France in Paris, also wanted to do something with and for a local group of young musicians or developing conductors. Perhaps a master class, he suggested, or some other tutelage of the sort that helps keep him busy amid his whirlwind schedule of worldwide appearances.

"From the beginning as a conductor, I felt younger generations must be oriented to the classical tradition," says Masur by phone following a morning rehearsal with SSO. "In America, you are far away from that tradition. This is knowledge conductors and musicians must have to lead and play."

Masur's oft-noted passion for donating his time to the young dovetailed nicely with Seattle Symphony's long-running support of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. The 67-year-old SYSO's mission, to provide outstanding artistic and educational programs to talented youth, could not be better exemplified than in a two-part, three-hour rehearsal session with Masur on Wednesday night.

Watching Masur work with a stage full of kids and teens on Schubert's Ninth Symphony, the maestro's sense of mission — imparting a precise historical and cultural context for the music — is apparent.

"Take it easy, take it easy," he orders the orchestra, trying to get them to lower both their volume and sense of drama. "Schubert wrote this piece in the Austrian tradition, with a certain eloquence."

"You need this knowledge to make music," Masur says over the phone, "or you fall into the mistake that you can play every composer differently. Each composer does have his own feeling, yes. But what I want is to use my own mid-European tradition to give young players the knowledge and experience of how to make their performance authentic."

Born in 1927 in Brieg, Germany (now Brzeg, Poland), Masur studied piano, composition and conducting in Leipzig. A rare hand condition ultimately ended his playing career, but that was only one of many dramas in his early years.

As a child, Masur, as did many Germans of his generation, was compelled to join the Hitler Youth. He defended a bridge during Germany's retreat from Holland in World War II, and later escaped a POW camp.

Following the war, Masur was subject to the whims of East Germany's communist government, which spied on him and banned him from work for three years during the 1960s. (He survived by selling his car and accepting engagements in secret.) The ban lifted in 1970, and Masur became kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, a post he kept until 1996.

Masur suffered serious injuries in a car accident in 1972 that claimed the life of his second wife. He has said he survived largely because of his young daughter, and that he eventually reached a catharsis by returning to work. (Masur and his current wife of 36 years have a son, Ken Masur, resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony.)

Masur played a major role in averting the threatened massacre of East German anti-government protesters in 1989, the year of the Berlin Wall's collapse. With 70,000 Leipzig demonstrators headed toward a confrontation with tanks, he went on the radio to appeal to the protesters to debate the issues at his concert hall instead.

"In the middle of a revolution, you're in a special situation," says Masur. "You're in a test. You compare its importance to the meaning of your own life. The situation [in Leipzig] was frightening, but if you are in a city of 500,000 people, and 70,000 are on the street, this is fantastic. I felt happiness that people felt strong enough to confront their government."

Masur was nominated to become the first president of a unified Germany. But his own sudden political freedom in his early 60s invited the kind of international recognition that has not ceased.

Besides long tenures in New York and Paris, Masur was principal conductor of the London Philharmonic for seven years. His lifetime position as honorary guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is among an extraordinary number of international honors he has accumulated in the last two decades. Reflecting on his achievements, Masur is most pleased he can pursue the musical agenda most important to him.

"First, I only go to orchestras where I feel we're connected," he says. "They want to bring out the same message I want to give to audiences. For me, it's the right way to give all I have from my own experiences."

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com.