Levine's season was short but sweet

The most famous Symphony Hall event this season was nonmusical: the scary moment when Boston Symphony Orchestra music director James Levine tripped and fell to the floor, tearing his rotator cuff, after a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

But it may also turn out to be the most consequential. Levine's enforced sabbatical of four months is his longest spell away from work since he was in his early 20s, and he has vowed to take advantage of it. BSO officials continue to work with Levine on future plans, and they report that he is full of energy, losing weight, taking his physical therapy seriously, and approaching his much-discussed health issues holistically. At this point there appears to be no reason to worry about his ability to undertake his full schedule at Tanglewood this summer.

Before his fall, Levine led 10 of this season's 26 programs, the first performance of an 11th, an opening-night gala, and two Carnegie Hall concerts. He also participated as conductor and pianist in a Boston Symphony Chamber Players event. Because of the fall, he withdrew from two concerts here and a high-profile national tour.

His boldest artistic initiative was leading the first five of 10 programs juxtaposing and linking the major works of Beethoven and Schoenberg. The initiative unfolded amid an informative atmosphere of exhibits, a scholarly conference, ancillary concerts, and even an evening of family photos and anecdotes with two of Schoenberg's children. The performances were on a high level, and Schoenberg's massive late-Romantic oratorio ''Gurrelieder" was a triumph for the BSO, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, the celebrity soloists, Levine, and Schoenberg himself.

A full assessment of this initiative should await the completion of the series next season, but there's no question that these programs have illuminated the revolutionary aspects of Beethoven as much as they have argued the still-problematic case for Schoenberg by demonstrating his roots in tradition and communicating his message with insight and passion.

For the rest, Levine put his own lucid imprint on certain works that have long been stamped ''property of the BSO": Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, Berlioz's ''Symphonie fantastique," Debussy's ''La mer," and Saint-Saens's ''Organ Symphony."

New music generated controversy, as it always has, and as it always should. Levine's primary commitment in this field is to American modernism, which is a pretty hard sell with general audiences. He revived some works by living Old Masters (George Perle, Gunther Schuller, Lukas Foss, Elliott Carter) while adding a recent work by Carter (two of his ''Three Illusions" were brand-new).

Levine's other world premiere this season was Jonathan Dawe's ''The Flowering Arts," a piece in which early music lies behind and breaks through the modern, and he led the most vividly emotional new music of the season: the East Coast premiere of ''Neruda Songs" by Peter Lieberson, so compellingly sung by his wife, mezzo Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Levine actually seems responsive to a wide spectrum of American music. It was good to hear the Gershwin Concerto in F rescued from the Pops repertory and performed as seriously as it deserves.

Throughout his decades at the Metropolitan Opera, Levine has often been accused of shutting out other first-rate conductors who might have threatened his position there. He has always responded by saying that he has repeatedly tried to engage other major figures who have turned him down. It is not as invariably exciting for a major European conductor to come to New York for two months to rehearse and perform as it is for the public to fantasize about it.

Whatever the truth about the Met situation, the BSO continues to enjoy a lustrous group of guest conductors. Many of them have years of association with the orchestra, so Levine didn't ''choose" them; but he did approve them.

Among the important conductors who appeared this season were Colin Davis, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Rafael Fruehbeck de Burgos, Bernard Haitink, Kurt Masur, and Robert Spano, often leading works by composers they are famous for interpreting (Davis with Tippett, Haitink with Mahler, Spano with Sibelius); David Robertson replaced Levine on the tour with enthusiastic critical response. At least three conductors led works most music directors would reserve for themselves: Berlioz's Requiem (Fruehbeck), Mahler's Sixth Symphony (Haitink), and two core works of Levine's repertoire (Dohnanyi), Mozart's ''Jupiter" Symphony and Stravinsky's ''Oedipus Rex."

Many of these conductors are as committed to new music as Levine is, and throughout his career Dohnanyi has promoted the European modernists the way Levine is now promoting the Americans. This time Dohnanyi brought the US premiere of a masterpiece by Henze, ''Adagio, Fugue, and Maenad's Dance." The goal of artistic diversity was upheld by others who led works in styles one cannot imagine Levine conducting, such as Tan Dun's ''Water Concerto" (Masur) and Kaija Saariaho's ''Nymphea Reflection" (Spano).

Every audience member cannot be expected to like every contemporary piece, but the same could be said about the standard repertory. What is important is for each conductor to present what he cares about intensely, and for the schedule to represent a wide spectrum of contemporary activity. Both criteria were met this season.

Most of the celebrity instrumentalists and stars from Levine's Met delivered the values for which they are famous. In a schedule crowded with renowned violinists, Julia Fischer stood out as the major debut artist of the season; it was a treat to salute a performer so young. (Youth was not a characteristic of most of the BSO's living composers, guest conductors, or soloists.) When Deborah Voigt pulled out of Beethoven's ''Missa Solemnis" the day of the performance, Christine Brewer hopped on a plane in St. Louis, emerged from a taxi at Symphony Hall a few minutes before concert time, walked onstage, and sang gloriously.

Some players and chorus members have complained that Levine's minimalist beat is hard to read and that he does not always maintain eye contact. But Levine was unafraid to deal with difficult personnel issues. For example, he allowed principal trumpet Charles Schlueter the dignity of a final retirement season that his long service to the BSO deserves, but Schlueter did not play in any of Levine's concerts.

And the orchestra generally played gloriously for Levine, who has given the guest conductors a new point of departure for their own adventures. The orchestra's collective technique and sound have changed under Levine: There is more blend, more contrast, better balances, infinitely more refinement, and even more power.

But technique is only a means to an end, which is a continuous engagement with the meaning of the music. Levine performances are not always tidy because he seems more interested in process than in perfection. Polish seems less important than striving human reality, including the possibility of human error. His concerts are not destinations but stages on a continuing journey for himself, the orchestra, and the audience.