Masur returns, bearing Mendelssohn

January 24, 2009|Jeremy Eichler, Globe Staff

So what are your plans for Mendelssohn's 200th birthday? The big day is not until Feb. 3, but the Boston Symphony Orchestra is already celebrating with an all-Mendelssohn program this week in Symphony Hall. Next season the BSO will perform the composer's remarkable oratorio "Elijah," but for now it's a bread-and-butter program of the Third and Fourth Symphonies along with the "Hebrides Overture."

On the podium this week is the German maestro Kurt Masur, who is not a bad guy to have around for a Mendelssohn birthday party. At 81, he has lived with this music for well over half a century; he has recorded large quantities of it; and he was music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra for more than two decades, a post that the composer held. This year Masur is traveling around the world championing Mendelssohn, who, while hardly neglected, still sometimes has to argue his way into the very top ranks of 19th-century composers.

Thursday night, in warm and spacious performances, Masur and the orchestra showed just how silly that argument is. The masterfully drawn, richly atmospheric "Hebrides Overture," written after a visit in 1829 to the Hebrides Islands off the coast of Scotland, came across with just the right blend of clarity and mystery. The strings had a burnished yet mellow tone, anchored by the cellos. All those rippling figurations in the violins came across, as they should, like wind over water.

The "Scottish" Symphony No. 3 owes its inspiration to the same summer travels, yet the work was completed in 1842. Thursday night there was a natural, just-so quality to the unfurling of the lines and the pacing more generally. In the first movement, Masur drew a striking pianissimo sound from the orchestra, quiet yet well-supported. The Scherzo was duly light and diaphanous, and the Adagio Cantabile had the gentle singing quality requested by its name. In the fourth movement, Masur coaxed some emphatic playing from the orchestra, lending the textures an almost Beethovenian heft without sounding forced or false.

Masur, of course, knows the orchestra well from his guest visits over the years, but Thursday night there was a more elusive quality in that mysterious way an ensemble can sometimes channel a conductor's musical personality for an evening. In that spirit, this was Mendelssohn with commitment and integrity.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.