Conductor Masur to Resume Duties

NEW YORK (AP) - When Kurt Masur returns from Germany to resume his duties as music director of the New York Philharmonic after his recent kidney transplant, he'll bring back more than memories of his German relatives.

The 74-year-old conductor said his nephew, a German sculptor, donated the kidney. In a statement that the New York Philharmonic released Tuesday, Masur thanked his relative, whom he did not identify, ``for my newly recovered health.''

Masur suffered no complications during the operation, performed Nov. 29 at the University Clinic in the eastern German city of Leipzig.

Masur's 11th and final season as the Philharmonic's musical director began Sept. 20 with a performance, televised in the United States, of Brahms' ``German Requiem'' in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He's scheduled to return to the Philharmonic on Feb. 7 for a performance of Wagner's ``Tristan and Isolde.''

Lorin Maazel, the 71-year-old director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, will replace the conductor at the end of the season.

Masur, born in Silesia, the former German territory that is now Poland, has close connections with Leipzig, having studied there and led the city's Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1970-96.