Playing in the majors
For the promising young artists of the Tanglewood Music Center, working with Jame Levine has been an eye-opening experience
LENOX -- James Levine said he wouldn't be making any major changes during his first summer with the Tanglewood Music Center.
But he did, simply by investing so much time in the work of the students at the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer academy for advanced musical training. During the past month at Tanglewood, the music director spent more than 50 hours working with the TMC fellows -- musicians, singers, and conductors who are the creme de la creme of college and conservatory students, hailing from as far away as Australia, China, and Slovakia. Soprano and teacher Phyllis Curtin, associated with Tanglewood for 60 years, says no music director since Tanglewood founder Serge Koussevitzky has spent more time with the students.
Levine emanated energy and enthusiasm, and so did the students. Of course, no one was going to get caught criticizing the new music director during this shakedown summer, especially with the press within earshot, but the excitement seemed to be general and genuine.
Levine led concert performances of Act 1 of Wagner's ''Die Walkuere" and Act 3 of ''Die Goetterdaemmerung," which were the result of nearly 30 hours of rehearsal with the TMC Orchestra. Only four opera orchestras in this country -- in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York -- regularly perform these works because of the difficulties and expenses involved, so this was a major educational experience for the young players. At the first read-through, some of the violinists were visibly stupefied by the length of their parts, and after they had been playing for more than an hour, some were counting the number of remaining pages.
In the rehearsals for ''Die Goetterdaemmerung," Levine, clad in his uniform of blue polo shirt and slacks and blazingly white sneakers, encouraged the orchestra to play with the kind of transparency that would let voices through, and for vivid characterization and storytelling throughout. In Wagner, the orchestra tells the story, weaving the web of past, present, and future. Concerned that no one seemed to know the plot, Levine arranged for the program notes to be distributed to the players.
In the purely orchestral passages, he wanted the musicians to go all out. Of Siegfried's Funeral March, he said, ''There should be no escaping it on any level. It's like a volcano, and you wish you weren't standing on it."
Trumpeter Matt Muckey, from Sacramento, had an important solo in the Funeral March. ''I played much louder than I've ever played before in my life," Muckey said with a grin. ''He really wanted it big, so that the audience would feel all the emotional power, but without losing the core of the sound, the vocal quality."
Concertmaster Katherine Bormann of Bismarck, N.D., said, ''Levine's small beat took some getting used to, but we caught on fast. He can just wiggle his fingers, and all of us know what color and character he wants." Levine wanted them to be self-reliant, she said. ''After a while, we tried to know what he wanted ahead of time, without his having to stop and say anything. When we succeeded, he'd lean over and give us a great big smile. That was the most fun."
Levine wasn't always smiling. At the close of one Wagner rehearsal, he apologized to the players for being ''cranky," although about the worst thing he'd said was that he wished they wouldn't keep repeating the same mistake. After the dress rehearsal, he added, ''I'm not a perfectionist. All I care about is that the character of every phrase is right."
Levine held two extended classes with the vocal fellows on art songs, and two on Act 1 of Mozart's ''Don Giovanni." At the second Mozart session, a chamber orchestra from the TMC was present, and the two TMC conducting fellows led the performances Levine had coached.
In the art-song meetings, Levine sat to one side, but he couldn't stop himself from repeatedly going to the piano to demonstrate a point or accompany the singer himself. Often he spoke in a bandstand lingo he might have picked up from his father, a dance band leader. Instead of asking a singer to begin, he'd exclaim, ''Hit it!"
He made many practical points about tempo, phrasing, and breath, but his principal advice for singers was, ''Taste the text; the sound will follow. If you are worrying about the sound you are making, the text will disappear." He apparently knew every word of every song, and was ready to sing them. And much of what he said sounded like an acting lesson. It was about how to establish and develop character and atmosphere.
This approach was even more apparent with ''Don Giovanni." He was full of practical advice about what will work in the theater and what won't. After all, he's conducted this work 60 times at the Metropolitan Opera since 1974.
What was less predictable was the way Levine drew on his inner stage director. He acknowledged that he has often found himself looking up from the pit at things onstage he was ''allergic to," and one of those things is what he called ''protagonitis": acting without reference to the other people onstage or to the dramatic situation. He was very clear about where he thought the characters ought to be positioned and what they ought to do in every recitative, aria, and ensemble, often describing the situations in blunt American language. ''He's getting away with murder again, the son of a bitch," he said, paraphrasing Leporello. Before Levine was through with him, a Don Giovanni in glasses, chinos, and loafers -- Chad Sloan of Fort Mitchell, Ky. -- was putting the moves on Zerlina like the greatest seducer in history.
Bass-baritone Charles Temkey, the Leporello, is already professionally active. Next season, he will be touring in Strauss's opera ''Daphne" with Renee Fleming. He knows Leporello's nonaristocratic milieu himself because he put himself through music school by running a commercial fishing business off Long Island.
''What Levine does," said Temkey, ''is take us where we are, make something good into something very good and something very good into something great. He's not trying to make you do it his way; he wants you to maximize your potential."
Soprano Michelle Johnson, who just finished her undergraduate work at New England Conservatory and was singing the role of Donna Anna, said, ''I'm only 22, but he convinced me that I could sing this, even though it goes higher and higher and faster and faster than anything I've done before. He told me it was in my voice, and that this would be a role I would perform one day. And when I did it, he gave me such a smile I turned all warm and gooey inside."
To everyone, but especially to the conductors, Levine explained the importance of working on a piece like ''Don Giovanni." ''An opera like this has it all -- music, singing, text, movement, drama," he said. ''What we learn from this, we can apply to all other music."
Much of Levine's work with the conductors took place in private conferences. In public, he complimented gestures directed to the orchestra rather than to the audience. Levine may be interested in the theatricality of his singers, but showmanship isn't something he enjoys watching in a conductor.
Conducting fellow Steven Jarvi of Grand Haven, Mich., reported that Levine had only one piece of career advice. ''Stop reading the newspaper. Be totally true to your musical convictions, and success will follow."
Both Jarvi and the other conducting fellow, Julian Kuerti of Toronto, were impressed by how Levine reverses the usual rehearsal sequence: He begins not with concern over the right notes and rhythms, but with the core of musical meaning, and then moves on to deal with the details that convey that meaning. ''He lays eggs in your brain," said Kuerti, son of pianist Anton Kuerti.
The conducting fellows also commented on how Levine seems to live in the musical moment -- a moment always connected to what led up to it and what follows.
Jarvi said, ''Levine is totally down to earth, but on that planet there is only music."
Looking aheadIn a conversation in his dressing room backstage in the Shed, Levine spoke about his plans for next summer. He will lead the TMC orchestra in a concert performance of Strauss's ''Elektra" with an international cast. The Tanglewood singers will also give the American stage premiere of Elliott Carter's only opera, ''What Next?" (1998), on a triple bill with two other 20th-century chamber operas to be announced.
He wants to try spreading the Festival of Contemporary Music over two weeks rather than crowding it into four or five days. ''If it is less densely scheduled," he said, ''we can do some more important pieces that there isn't time to prepare now." He also wants the BSO's regular weekend schedule to complement the festival offerings.
The BSO staff is negotiating with additional musicians he would like to join the faculty. ''Nothing ever stays the same," he said. ''I want to make changes not by any big upheavals, but by strengthening everything we already have and do. We want to create a situation where the best young musicians simply have to come to Tanglewood." 