James Levine

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: James Levine

(born June 23, 1943, Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. conductor. He debuted as a pianist at age 10 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. At Juilliard he studied piano with Rosina Lhévinne (1880 – 1976) and conducting with Jean Morel (1903 – 75). He was assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1964 to 1970. A guest appearance conducting Tosca (1971) led to his appointment as principal conductor (1973) and later music director (1975) and artistic director (1986) of the Metropolitan Opera. He built the flagging Met orchestra into a virtuoso ensemble and became recognized as one of the world's greatest conductors. He served as director of Chicago's Ravinia Festival from 1973 to 1993 and was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2004.

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( b Cincinnati, 23 June 1943). American conductor and pianist. He was a piano soloist with the Cincinnati SO at the age of ten. After study at the Juilliard School he joined the Cleveland Orchestra as assistant to Szell. He made his Met début in 1971 and became music director there in 1975. He made his Salzburg début in 1975, Bayreuth in 1982, and has also appeared at the Vienna Staatsoper. As an orchestral conductor his repertory ranges from the 18th century to Xenakis and Cage; he is an outstanding Mahler interpreter. He has conducted Mozart from the keyboard and plays chamber music.

Biography: James Levine

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The American conductor and pianist James Levine (born 1943) was an outstanding musical director who developed and maintained the Metropolitan Opera as one of the world's finest companies.

James Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a musical family. A prodigy, he made his debut as a pianist performing Mendelssohn's Second Piano Concerto with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra when he was ten years old. At the age of 13 he studied piano with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music Festival. The festival needed someone to conduct the offstage chorus for a production of Mozart's opera Cosí fan tutte. Levine took the position and enjoyed it so much that he began to think of a career as a conductor.

He also spent summers in his childhood at the Aspen Music School and Festival where he studied with Walter Levin, violinist with the La Salle Quartet. He continued to study privately at home in Cincinnati and, through special arrangements, was able to devote afternoons to music studies and still complete a normal high school education. In 1961 he enrolled at Juilliard and was found to be so advanced that he was placed directly in the graduate program, in which he studied conducting with Jean Morel and piano with Rosina Lhévinne. During this time, he also studied with Rudolf Serkin, Alfred Wallenstein, Max Rudolf, and Fausto Cleva.

In 1962 he conducted Bizet's opera The Pearl Fishers at Aspen. When Levine was 20, George Szell, one of the world's foremost conductors, asked him to be assistant conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, the youngest musician to hold such a post. From 1964 to 1970, he attended George Szell's rehearsals, concerts, and recording sessions and himself rehearsed and conducted under Szell's watchful eye. During this time he was also music director of the University Circle Orchestra and chairman of the Cleveland Institute's Department of Orchestral Training. He continued to appear at the Aspen Music School and Festival, now as a teacher as well as a conductor. He managed to perform the same activities for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's summer festival, Meadow Brook. In addition to all these commitments he also worked at Oakland University.

In 1971 he conducted both Luisa Miller and Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera and was named its principal conductor - a post created for him; he was named music director of the Met in 1976; and in 1986 he was chosen the company's first artistic director. He also began his prolific recording career at this time, conducting operas by Verdi and Bellini.

Levine put his stamp upon the Metropolitan Opera. He managed to spend eight months a year there despite his hectic schedule, expanding its repertoire and developing its production values. He made numerous additions from the canon of modern opera, including Lulu, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Billy Budd, and Porgy and Bess.

Levine revived Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, and Der fliegende Holländer, and he began a Mozart cycle which added Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito to the Met's Mozart repertoire. He also presented uncut versions of Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, La Forza del Destino, and Don Carlos, a reflection of his strongly held view that the composer's work is to be presented as he - not some subsequent, lesser musical light - envisioned it.

Although prolific in his studio recordings, Levine believed in live recordings and perceived the value of recordings to be their documentation of the style and the performances of an era. To this end, he moved beyond the traditional Saturday radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera to create the "Live from the Met" television opera series in 1977. These programs, presenting complete, subtitled versions of actual performances and using increasingly sophisticated camera techniques, brought live operas into the homes of the largest potential audience in history. This series included La Bohème, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Tosca, Faust, and a variety of other works. He also initiated the annual revue of orchastral programs with soloists. In 1983 James Levine was the subject of a Time magazine cover story which claimed him to be America's leading maestro. The next year, he was named Musician of the Year by Musical America and was the first recipient of New York City's annual Cultural Award.

Levine conducted on tours with the Met orchestra throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, and Japan. In addition, he was a regular guest with the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin, Munich and Vienna Philharmonics, and the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. He also had the honor of conducting in Frankfurt on that city's 1200th anniversary in 1990.

In 1996 James Levine celebrated 25 years with the Metropolitan Opera with an eight-hour performance on April 27th, broadcast over television. Excerpts from 43 operas, along with many of the most gifted performers such as Placido Domingo, Birget Nielsson, and Kiri Te Kanawa, were featured. Bernard Holland of the New York Times wrote, "What everyone seemed to share was a deep respect for Mr. Levine's ability. In opera conducting, no one accompanies better than him. … It is hard to recognize legends while they are still among us, but rest assured Mr. Levin will be one." In a documentary film about his career, James Levine: A Life in Music, the conductor stated, "I sometimes say that music chose me, the more I felt I just wanted to be immersed in it and the more it answered all my needs."

Biography

Early years

Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to a musical family: his maternal grandfather was a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist, who led a dance band, and his mother was an actress. He began to play the piano as a small child. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Levine subsequently studied music with Walter Levin, first violinist in the LaSalle Quartet. In 1956 he took piano lessons with Rudolf Serkin at the Marlboro Music School, Vermont. In the following year he began studies with Rosina Lhévinne at the Aspen Music School. After graduating from Walnut Hills High School, the acclaimed magnet school in Cincinnati, he entered the Juilliard School of Music in New York City in 1961, and took courses in conducting with Jean Morel. He graduated from the Juilliard School in 1964 and joined the American Conductors project connected with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

From 1964 to 1965, Levine served as an apprentice to George Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra and then served as assistant conductor until 1970. That year, he also made his debut as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra at its summer home at Robin Hood Dell. He made his debut in that same year with the Welsh National Opera and the San Francisco Opera. Levine had a long association with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and served from 1973 to 1993 as music director of the Ravinia Festival. In 1990, at the request of Roy E. Disney, he arranged the music and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the soundtrack of Fantasia 2000, released by Walt Disney Pictures. He also served as music director with the Cincinnati May Festival (1974–1978).

Metropolitan Opera career

Levine made his Metropolitan Opera debut in June 1971 in a festival performance of Tosca. His success led to further appearances and to his appointment as its principal conductor in 1973. He then became music director in 1976. In 1983, he served as conductor and musical director for the Franco Zeffirelli screen adaptation of La Traviata, which featured the Met orchestra and chorus members. He became the company's first artistic director in 1986^[2], and relinquished the title in 2004.

Under his leadership, the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and chorus has become one of the finest operatic ensembles in the world, punctuated by the regular concert series for the orchestra and chamber ensembles he began at Carnegie Hall.^[3] On his recent appointment as General Manager of the Met, Peter Gelb emphasized that James Levine would be welcome to remain as long as he wanted to direct music there. His present contract runs through the 2010/2011 season.

At the Met, Levine has led numerous new productions of works of Mozart, Verdi, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Gioachino Rossini, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Kurt Weill, Claude Debussy, Alban Berg, and George Gershwin. For the 25th anniversary of his Met debut, Levine conducted the world premiere of John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, commissioned especially to mark the occasion.

Levine has led the Metropolitan Opera on many domestic and international tours. The company broadcasts several live television and simulcast film productions yearly, and live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts every Saturday afternoons around the world each season from December to April.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Levine first conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in April 1972.^[4] In October 2001, Levine was named music director of the BSO, effective with the 2004–2005 season, with an initial contract of five years^[5], becoming the first American-born conductor to head the BSO. He now divides his time between New York and Boston. Thus, for the first time in living memory, the same conductor was in charge of the country's leading opera house and a major orchestra. In Europe, Herbert von Karajan performed a similar feat in the 1950s as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and director of the Vienna Staatsoper.

One unique condition that Levine negotiated was increased flexibility of the time allotted for rehearsal, allowing the orchestra additional time to prepare more challenging works.^[6] Since the start of his tenure, the orchestra has also established an "Artistic Initiative Fund" of about US$40 million to fund the more expensive of Levine's projects.^[7]

One criticism of Levine during his BSO tenure is that he has not attended many orchestra auditions. A 2005 article reported that Levine had attended two out of 16 auditions during his tenure up to that time. Levine himself has responded that he has the ability to provide input on musician tenure decisions after the initial probationary period, and that it is difficult to know how well a given player will fit the given position until that person has had a chance to work with the orchestra: "My message is the audition isn't everything."^[8]

Another 2005 report stated that during Levine's first season as music director, the greater workload from the demands of playing more unfamiliar and contemporary music has increased physical stress with some of the BSO musicians. Levine and the players met to discuss this, and he agreed to program changes to lessen these demands.^[9] Levine has received general critical praise for revitalizing the quality and repertoire since the beginning of his tenure.^[10]

Levine has had to deal with health issues in recent years, including sciatica and what he has called "intermittent tremors".^[11] On March 1, 2006, Levine fell onstage during a standing ovation after a performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder. Later that month, he underwent surgery to repair the injury. He returned to the podium on July 7, 2006, leading the BSO at Tanglewood.^[12] In July 2008, the orchestra announced Levine's withdrawal from the majority of the 2008 Tanglewood season, because of the need for surgery to remove a kidney with a malignant cyst.^[5] He returned to the podium in Boston on September 24, 2008, leading the BSO's season opening concert at Symphony Hall.^[13] On September 29, 2009, it was announced that Levine would undergo emergency back surgery for a herniated disk and would miss at least three weeks of engagements, including a season opening performance at Carnegie Hall with the BSO, performances of Tosca with the Met, and regular BSO subscription concerts.^[14]

Levine's current BSO contract is through 2012.^[15]

Conducting in Europe

Levine's Boston Symphony contract limits his guest appearances with American orchestras. However, Levine has conducted regularly in Europe, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and at the Bayreuth Festival. Levine has also been a regular guest with the Philharmonia of London and the Dresden Staatskapelle. Since 1975, he has also conducted regularly at the Salzburg Festival and the annual July Verbier Festival. From 1999 to 2004, Levine was chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic orchestra, and was credited with improving the quality of instrumental ensemble during his tenure.^[16]

Levine also performs regularly in chamber music ensembles and as an accompanist in Lieder recitals.

Levine is Conductor Laureate of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, the resident orchestra of the annual music festival based in Verbier, Switzerland, and has led that orchestra since it was organized in 2000. The Festival website describes Levine as “not only an esteemed conductor and an inexhaustible source of inspiration to the orchestra, but also a passionate teacher.” Levine himself has said in a 2004 interview:

"At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching. You want to teach what you have learned to the next generation so that they don't have to spend time reinventing the wheel. I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment."

Since 2005 Levine has also served as Music Director of the Tanglewood Music Center, a summer academy of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Conductors he has helped and influenced through his musical mentoring include Marco Armiliato, James Conlon, John Keenan and, most currently, Jens Georg Bachmann.

Recordings

James Levine can be seen and heard in many audio and video recordings. Levine has recorded extensively with many orchestras and especially often with the Metropolitan Opera. His performance of Aïda with Leontyne Price, her last in opera, was preserved on video and may be seen at the Met's own online archive of performances. Of particular note are his performances of Wagner's complete Der Ring des Nibelungen. A studio recording made for Deutsche Grammophon in 1987–1989 can be found on compact disc and a 1989 live performance of the Ring is available on DVD.

References

^ Information compiled by the Metropolitan Opera Archives
^ Kettle, Martin (November 17, 2000). "Staying power". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,398525,00.html. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
^ Crutchfield, Will (November 11, 1990). "From the Pit at the Met, the Sound of Success". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/11/11/arts/classical-music-from-the-pit-at-the-met-the-sound-of-success.html. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
^ Berg, Thomasine (22 February 2009). "Keeping time: James Levine and the Boston Symphony Orchestra". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/02/22/keeping_time/. Retrieved 2009-02-25.
^ ^a ^b Edgers, Geoff (July 9, 2008). "Surgery sidelines Levine". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/07/09/surgery_sidelines_levine/?page=full. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
^ Sandow, Greg. "Right Man for the Job". The Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2001.
^ Edgers, Geoff. "The cost of excellence". The Boston Globe, September 25, 2005.
^ Edgers, Geoff. "6 minutes to shine". The Boston Globe, September 4, 2005.
^ Edgers, Geoff (March 17, 2005). "Levine's pace proves hard on BSO". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/03/17/levines_pace_proves_hard_on_bso/. Retrieved 2007-05-25.
^ Schwartz, Lloyd. "Stretching exercises: The BSO challenges the audience and itself". Boston Phoenix, March 25–31, 2005.
^ Dobkin, Matt. "Hey, Baby, It's Jimmy". New York, January 16, 2006.
^ Beggy, Carol, and Mark Shanahan. "A maestro on the mend". The Boston Globe, March 31, 2006.
^ Eichler, Jeremy (September 26, 2008). "Welcome sights on opening night as Levine returns to lead BSO". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/09/26/welcome_sights_on_opening_night_as_levine_returns_to_lead_bso/.
^ Wakin, Daniel J. (2009-09-30). "James Levine to Bow Out for 3 Weeks". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/arts/music/30levi.html.
^ Eichler, Jeremy (February 22, 2009). "The opening movement". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/02/22/the_opening_movement/?page=full. Retrieved February 24, 2009.
^ Tommasini, Anthony (February 19, 2002). "Clarity and Atmospherics, Courtesy of Levine". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/19/arts/music-review-clarity-and-atmospherics-courtesy-of-levine.html. Retrieved 2007-09-02.

External links

James Levine at Allmusic

Preceded by Rafael Kubelík	Music Director, Metropolitan Opera 1976–present	Succeeded by incumbent

v • d • e Munich Philharmonic Music Directors

Hans Winderstein (1893) · Hermann Zumpe (1895) · Ferdinand Löwe (1897) · Felix Weingartner (1898) · Georg Schnéevoigt (1905) · Ferdinand Löwe (1908) · Hans Pfitzner (1919) · Siegmund von Hausegger (1920) · Oswald Kabasta (1938) · Hans Rosbaud (1945) · Fritz Rieger (1949) · Rudolf Kempe (1967) · Sergiu Celibidache (1979) · James Levine (1999) · Christian Thielemann (2004)

v • d • e Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Directors

George Henschel (1881) · Wilhelm Gericke (1884) · Arthur Nikisch (1889) · Emil Paur (1893) · Wilhelm Gericke (1898) · Karl Muck (1906) · Max Fiedler (1908) · Karl Muck (1912) · Henri Rabaud (1918) · Pierre Monteux (1919) · Sergei Koussevitzky (1924) · Charles Munch (1949) · Erich Leinsdorf (1962) · William Steinberg (1969) · Seiji Ozawa (1973) · James Levine (2004)

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