Without Masur, there would be no Gewandhaus, no Mendelssohn Haus

Among Kurt Masur’s many achievements in 26 years as Gewandhaus music director was to persuade the city and the state to restore the house where his predecessor, Felix Mendelssohn, had lived in the 1840s.

There was no official enthusiasm for the project. Masur drove it through by sheer force of personality, eventually establishing a foundation that maintains the museum and its projects to the present day.

Masur was also personally responsible for getting the Honecker regime to build a new Gewandhaus concert hall, in place of the one that was bombed out.

Tomorrow, the city of Leipzig will open a condolence book for Kurt Masur in the foyer of the new Gewandhaus.

Kondolenzbuch für Kurt Masur (1927-2015)

Am Montag, den 21. Dezember 2015, 9:30 Uhr, tragen sich der Leipziger Oberbürgermeister, Burkhard Jung, Ehrendirigent Herbert Blomstedt, der Orchestervorstand, Gewandhausdirektor Andreas Schulz und der Vorsitzende des Personalrates, Konrad Lepetit sowie Jürgen Ernst, Direktor des Mendelssohn-Hauses in das Kondolenzbuch ein, das im Hauptfoyer des Gewandhauses ausgelegt wird. Das Kondolenzbuch ist ab dann auch außerhalb des Konzertbetriebs öffentlich zugänglich (Mo-Fr 10-18 Uhr, Sa 10-14 Uhr).