Kurt Masur obituary

Conductor who rose from the closed musical scene of East Germany to become an international figureThere was a time when the German term kapellmeister (literally, the music director of a chapel, and so a total all-rounder) stood for the conducting virtues of good preparation and solid hard work. Then it took on pejorative overtones: to be kapellmeisterish was to show a lack of imagination and fire.In today’s musical climate the notion has become virtually obsolete: the chief conductors of t