TV REVIEW : Masur: Committed to Old, New Worlds

Though the summer lingers on for local orchestras, the New York Philharmonic swung into fall action Wednesday. New music director Kurt Masur opened the season with a program clearly designed to send a message.

And it was a message that could be heard around the country too, as the concert also launched the new season for the PBS “Live at Lincoln Center” series. It didn’t need commentator Martin Bookspan desperately filling in a gaping intermission by reading program congratulations from international musicians and politicians to underscore the importance of the event, either.

Masur’s program outlined the past/present, Old World/New World focus that the conductor now embodies. He began with two fanfares by John Adams, and the second set of Aaron Copland’s “Old American Songs,” turning after intermission to the repertory glory of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony.

That may seem almost too calculated a statement, ritually touching all politically (and sentimentally) correct bases, but it also proved powerful and compelling as a purely musical grouping. Masur worked with his customary skill and commitment, whether from the score for the American pieces or from memory in the Bruckner, with which he has long been associated.

The 64-year-old German and the Philharmonic did not prolong their engagement with a lengthy “music director designate” period. When the death of Leonard Bernstein left some extra weeks open in the schedule, Masur was able to take them, and begin his tenure with an extra sixth season as director.

The decisive energy apparent in that move was also present in the concert Wednesday. It would be going too far, particularly on live broadcast evidence, to say the orchestra is fully his artistically, but the New York musicians gave him responsive, steady playing in this very demanding program.

There were points in the Bruckner where ensemble was not particularly tight--the first movement, for example, where the violin-flute doublings often stuttered. Masur’s compressed little hand signals may require some familiarity, though he and the orchestra have a prior record together.

But for emotional grandeur and sheer Romantic sweep, it would be hard to top this effort. The work was first heard in Leipzig, and Masur, the music director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra there for 20 years, has very fully developed ideas of his own about the piece. He spurns the cymbal crash at the adagio climax, for example, and employs much expressive rubato.

In collaboration with baritone Thomas Hampson, Masur created an almost Brucknerian--and not always appropriate--degree of weight and majesty in the Copland settings. Hampson applied his fluid, rich vocal resources to vivid, even exaggerated characterizations, from an ethereal lullaby head voice of “Little Horses” to the spitting humor of “Ching-a-ring Chaw.”

The camera-work concentrated on close-ups, as usual. It did provide some sense of the spatial effects of Adams’ “Tromba lontana,” however, perforce missing sonically on television. “A Short Ride in a Fast Machine” was the other Adams’ entry, sounding a little too rotund and well-mannered.