Kurt Masur proved why he is a conducting legend. We caught him leading the SF Symphony on Thursday night, and, even at 80, the man can conduct. Yep, eighty year old. He looks so not octogenarian we thought it was a typo in the program, until we found a list of celebrations for his big birthday this year. But who cares about his age: he is not working on the senior tour, he is still in the major leagues.

There were two highlights to the evening: an impeccable Totentanz by Franz Liszt with Louis Lortie soloing at the piano. As a composer, Liszt was much more an innovator than we give him credit for. The Totentanz is a theme and variation piece on a musical motive borrowed from the liturgical canon, the motive rising up, creeping up slowly out of the lower register to reincarnate itself under different guises. The piece is surprisingly modern, with dissonant chords and funky up-and-downs on the keyboard played with the back of the nails, that we don’t often associate with a late romantic period. Louis Lortie, a Canadian pianist, played through the tricks with aplomb, going gracefully through the technical hoops of fire.

Kurt Masur built an outstanding progression out of a piece which keeps returning to the same theme, always going forward, going the whole range from the pianissimo to the triple-f fortissimo, and getting the orchestra to enthusiastically buy into his vision. Masur does not conduct for the audience: he goes bare handed and avoids the effusive gestures, but his pretty economical movements yield big results.

The other highlight came after intermission: the same dynamic qualities for the orchestra (described to us at intermission as bombastic) came alive in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. The Battle on the Ice (Alexander Nevsky depicts a battle on the frozen Neva river between the Russians and the Germans) encapsulates perfectly Masur’s interpretation: the piece opens with a long crescendo masterfully timed to climax in long exhortations and cries of liberation. Masur likes his music with a strong character, and the only one who could complain would be the harpist: he was on stage, and he was moving his fingers all right, but we could not hear him. And we could not care less!

In between, the orchestra and Lortie played Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, and while they did so earnestly, we have to say it’s not the Beethoven piece we like the most. Sure, we were reminded of András Schiff take on Beethoven when the piece opened with the same arpeggiated figure as the Sonata No. 1 in F Minor and went into a long solo piano cadenza without a proper melody: Beethoven is not a melodist, Schiff says in his Wigmore lectures, he is more a sculptor with his music when Mozart is more a painter. And in this piece, when Beethoven does get to a melody, it’s a rather kitschy theme which rotates between the flute, then the oboe, then turns into an Ode to Joy-like explosion with the full orchestra and the chorus. It’s hair rising when the chorus unleashes its full power, it’s powerfull, and Masur goes for broke for it. But it’s not a surprise Beethoven revisited the construction in his 9th symphony: this piece does not feel fully accomplished, no matter the expertise of the conductor.

Ragnar Bohlin, the chorus director, needs to be saluted: omnipresent in Nevsky and bringing the cavalry to conclude the Choral Symphony, the chorus was excellent. Well, apart from a tendency that we never had noticed before, to dance along with the music from many of the singers, swaying from one foot to the other, as if they were auditioning for the Glide choir.

This will unfortunately be published to late to attend one of the concert in the series, but if Kurt Masur comes back, and we sure hope he will, don’t miss it!