Conductor Kurt Masur dies at age 88

Washington

KURT Masur, a renowned conductor who led the New York Philharmonic for 11 years and who manifested the healing power of music during tense political moments in his native East Germany, when he played a crucial peacemaking role in the weeks before the collapse of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, died on Dec 19 at a hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 88.

He had complications from Parkinson's disease, the New York Philharmonic said in a statement.