“For the second year in a row, Ken-David Masur is conducting the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s season-opening concerts. Only now he’s the boss,” beginning as music director this month, writes Jim Higgins in Wednesday’s (9/4) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “When Ken-David Masur was hired in November, he said that he planned ‘to be embedded in the Milwaukee community absolutely.’ True to his word, Masur and his wife, pianist Melinda Lee Masur, have bought a home and prepared it for the arrival of their three school-age children.… He’s excited about standing in front of the orchestra to rehearse the season-opening program of music by Wagner, Robert Schumann, Richard Strauss and contemporary composer Detlev Glanert on Sept. 13-15…. All of the music on this program has some connection to Masur’s hometown, Leipzig [Germany]….. Over the past decade, the Masurs have engaged audiences in a distinct and surprising way as co-founders of New York’s Chelsea Music Festival, an annual themed event that brings together musical, visual and culinary arts…. With both the Chelsea Festival, which will continue, and the Milwaukee Symphony, Masur hopes to create something eye-opening without sensationalism, a phrase he draws from critic Eduard Hanslick’s description of Brahms’ music.”
Posted September 6, 2019
In photo: Ken-David Masur conducts the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra’s 2018-19 season-opening concert. Masur begins his first season as music director on September 13, 2019 at the Marcus Center in Milwaukee. Photo by Jonathan Kirn
