Levine back a bit lighter, but still carries big baton
By Keith Powers
Saturday, July 8, 2006 - Updated: 12:42 AM EST
Call it the return of Slim Jim.
He says its 30 pounds gone. Well, OK, nobody lies like the bathroom scale. But James Levine does look thinner, healthier, and the best part of all, there’s no change in his magical right baton-waving hand.
And so he proved it last night at Tanglewood, conducting a little eerily for this listener the same program that he was leading when he took a header and crashed into rotator cuff surgery on March 1. That would be the Schoenberg first chamber symphony, and the glorious Beethoven ninth.
He’s certainly lost a bunch of pounds, but James Levine has lost none of his humane gravitas. Twenty minutes of Schoenberg does not scale up to an hour and a half of Beethoven, but Levine made the two works seem to have equal musical value. Solos by principal viola Steven Ansell and concertmaster Malcolm Lowe created an arc of excellence for the entire ensemble. Levine, a great believer in this repertory, was probably delighted to conduct this work first after coming off the “disabled list.”
After intermission: Beethoven’s ninth, usually the season finale at Tanglewood, but clearly something Levine wanted to conduct (he won’t be around for the season finale). It’s hard to be anything but maudlin about this piece, which challenges believer and non-believer to understand the potential of human greatness. Like all great pieces, it can have terrific performances, and absolutely marginal performances.
My devoted sweetheart, who has heard Beethoven’s ninth a dozen times and sat in this same Shed many more times than that, whispered to me at one moment in the second movement, “I’ve heard things that I’ve never heard before.”
So true. Maestro is a word used easily for orchestra leaders. Nobody does less, and gets more, than the Boston Symphony Orchestra maestro. This performance of Beethoven’s ninth - filled with flawed singing from chorus and soloists - was still one of the most memorable experiences of this listener’s memory.
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Levine Opening night at Tanglewood, in Lenox, last night.
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