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Spokeswoman: German Conductor Masur Falls at Paris Concert

German conductor Kurt Masur on Thursday took a fall during a concert in Paris as he was leading the Orchestre National de France, a spokeswoman for Radio France said.

"He fell while he was conducting the orchestra during the second half of the concert and was rushed to a hospital where he is undergoing tests," the spokeswoman said.

Masur is 84 years old and has been suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The cause for the fall was not immediately known.

Masur was conducting Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1.

Born in 1927 in what was then the German province of Silesia, Masur was an outstanding figure in former East Germany where he received a great number of awards.

In 1989, as the Berlin Wall tumbled, he turned the headquarters of his Gewandhausorchestra in Leipzig into a hotbed of dissent.

He later moved to New York, where he became the music director of the Philharmonic in 1991. Since 2002 Masur has been the music director of the Orchestre National de France.

Source: Agence France Presse


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