Wang Center's Name Change, BSO Tour

As we report today, the Wang Center for the Performing Arts will be hereby known as the Citi Performing Arts Center. And we've got the logo to prove it.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra confirms the dates on its 2007 European tour. James Levine, who called me before a meeting he had with BSO Managing Director Mark Volpe, generally doesn't speak in soundbytes. That means I couldn't use a lot of what he said in our 350-word story. So here's more.

On whether the BSO wants to show-off itself under Levine: "I think that's never really my motivation. Anything that suggests that we're proving or exhibiting is really not the case ...it is true the world over that orchestras, great orchestras, travel to other places."

On the focus a tour brings to the players: "If you're playing concerts most nights, then it isn't as if you had all the other things that are the spectrum of your life in Boston. You're away from some of it. And therefore your own relationship to the work and the audience and the pieces is different. It helps develop a lot of qualities, not least of which is playing the music more than the number of times we played the music in Boston."

On the repertoire for the tour: "It's nice that there are two works by Bartok. That's something they wanted and we were very happy to do. To be able to take the chorus and be able to do a big major piece by Berlioz, and also one of the things the orchestra has known and had for a long time. And a piece like the Brahms First Symphony, that's a very logical one for us. We played that together even before I was musical director. The Ives is a piece that other European orchestras who discover that I did that piece asked me to program and they didn't have much chance to play it."