Levine is set to lead BSO in new direction
James Levine's first season as the 14th music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra will mark a definite shift for the orchestra, as he brings to New England his career-long campaign to convince audiences that the music of the past century deserves to stand alongside the classics that preceded it.
That became clear when he announced next season's 26 programs at a press conference in Symphony Hall yesterday and discussed the 12 he will lead.
His tenure officially begins with Mahler's Eighth Symphony, the "Symphony of a Thousand," Oct. 22-23. This comes in the fourth week of the season, not the opening night, because of a prior commitment to open the Metropolitan Opera with Verdi's "Otello."
BSO managing director Mark Volpe explained yesterday Levine will be able to open the subsequent four BSO seasons, even as he continues as music director of the Met. Levine says he wants to spend as little time on the New York/Boston shuttle as possible; he prefers to work in uninterrupted blocks of time with each of his institutions.
This might be the first BSO season in decades not to include a work by Tchaikovsky. Still, popular symphonies by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms appear on Levine's programs, along with a concert performance of Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman." "The Boston Symphony should play opera, just as the Metropolitan Orchestra should play symphonic works, and both groups should play chamber music," the ebullient 60-year-old conductor emphasized yesterday. Signaling the festivity of the occasion, he donned a maroon sport coat over his usual navy blue rehearsal clothes.
What is new in Levine's programming for the orchestra is an emphasis on the whole of the 20th century, not just the first third. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartok appear, as they have for decades -- but so do midcentury figures as diverse as Gershwin and Messiaen, and such late-century masters as Ligeti, Lutoslawski, and Elliott Carter. The 21st century is represented on Levine's programs by new works from Milton Babbitt, Charles Wuorinen, and Boston's John Harbison. All these composers, except Babbitt, have been played by the BSO before, but not as part of a campaign.
"Some of the great composers of our time," Levine said, "need a coherent exposure of their work so that musicians and public can get comfortable with it. All of them found first performances, but not repeat performances. The second time you always discover things you didn't hear the first time." He added, "The orchestra has built a repertory of Bartok and Stravinsky works, and a modern orchestra needs to build a repertory of the works of Elliott Carter, who is perhaps our greatest living composer." He saluted the 95-year-old Carter, seated in the front row for the press conference. Levine says he believes programming should be coherent, illuminating, and interconnected. "I don't like external thematic programming," he said in an interview earlier this week, scooping up a carrot from a supply of healthy munchies at his side. "It has to be organic." At the press conference, he did not want to talk about plans for the next three seasons, but many programs are already in place, and what may appear peculiar now will probably make sense in a larger picture.
If there is not much Beethoven this year, Levine said in the interview, "more is coming." There is no Baroque music in 2004-05, but he explained, "There is no way to do everything in one season. And if you're going to play Baroque music, you have to play it well."
And while Levine is interested in new works by young composers, it is clear achieving an overview of the works of living composers of the senior generation takes precedence.Levine said he chose the Mahler symphony for the opening "because it is a whole-world piece that bridges the earth and the heavens, alive and singing. Seiji Ozawa took his leave with Mahler's Ninth Symphony, music of farewell . . . so I felt I should begin with music of celebration." Levine's programming may have inspired next season's guest conductors to plan more adventurous concerts. They will bring an additional five pieces by living artists, including Boston composers Yehudi Wyner and Michael Gandolfi. "When I engage a guest conductor, I want him to conduct what he wants to, something that is close to his heart," Levine said. "If he wants to do something that I had planned to do myself, I will let him have it if I can think of a suitable replacement; if it is something I really need, I will tell him. And if we get a piece really honed, it's fun to give a guest conductor a Rolls-Royce and invite him to drive it his way."The new music director graciously evaded a question about the Patriots ("I can't say a word"), but did respond to one about how he feels to be with the BSO. "Why did I choose Boston? Because it has everything I need and want -- a great orchestra, a great hall, a great commissioning tradition, and a great audience."
And in public as well as in private, Levine said he was "champing at the bit" to get started. In the press conference he said, "I look at these programs and get goose bumps -- and I made them."
