Kurt Masur

Orchestre National de France

Conducted by its former chef conductor for many years, KURT MASUR, with a very good programme,  Romeo and Julie ouverture by Peter Tchaikovsky, followed by Leonard Bernsteins Suite from West Side Story, with a remarkable beautiful playing bratch soloist, Sabine Toutain, in Some Where. Ending with parts from the two Romeo and Julie Suites by Sergei Prokofiev, mixed good together not in the normal way as suites, but so the audience could follow the history of William Shakespeare, if they know it. This rather popular programme, but very difficult for the musicians, was a great success for the orchestra and the conductor
. And it was especially very pleasent to enjoy so many young people among the audience

.

I had the feeling that this combination of old classical composers, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev, together with a “modern” Leonard Bernstein was a wodnerful way of introducing the music composed for the beautiful Romeo and Julie history, seen by different composers with adifferent angle of view, as the situation was different in Russia in the two different epriodes, where Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev were composing their romantic impressins of WIlliam Shakespeares history and in the way that Leonard Bernstein had his feeling of how this should sound transfered to a modern New York in the 1950´s.

When the orchestra with a lot of outstanding soloists and a well prepared and inspiring conductor then take that in to their hearts, it has the best possibility to become a success.