Levine Salutes His Hometown

   Even James Levine, famed music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony, admits to "a little wave of terror" before the music begins.
   Then it’s over.
   "The music starts and that’s all there is. I’m not aware of anything until it stops. Sometimes I think the hall could fall down behind me and I would not know it."
   Cincinnati native Levine – in town to conduct final concert of the 2005 May Festival at 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall discussed his home town, returning to the May Festival, Music Hall, conducting and the future of symphonic music in an hour-long press conference Thursday afternoon at Music Hall.
   Music director of the May Festival from 1974-78, Levine, 61, is making his first appearance at the festival since he was guest conductor in 1980. The work he will perform, Berlioz’ Requiem, was on the schedule in 1978, Levine’s last season before he was succeeded by music director James Conlon.
   While he is here, he will also help his mother, Hyde Park resident Helen Levine, celebrate her 90th birthday.
   A 1961 graduate of Walnut Hills High School, Levine studied at New York’s Juilliard School, was George Szell’s assistant at the Cleveland Orchestra at age 21 and began his long association with the Met as principal conductor in 1973.
   Cincinnati was an ideal place for him to grow up, he said.
   "It was as great a situation for somebody growing up who wanted to do what I wanted to do as anyone could ever imagine. One could say it would be good to be born and raised in New York or a European capital, but I’m not at all sure. I think if it had been me, I wouldn’t have known quite where to go, and I would have been perhaps quite swamped by the quantity of it. It was better for me to go after I had an education from various piano teachers, from the LaSalle Quartet, from listening to the symphony every week, from even curling up in a chair in front of the radio on Saturday afternoons when the Metropolitan Opera was on."
   As he reached high school, he "got restless to leave," he said. "I thought, you really have to go out in the world. But I was out in the world just a few years before I really understood what a great town Cincinnati is. I was very happy to come back, which I did frequently for a lot of years. After my father passed away (bandleader Lawrence Levine), it was better for my mother to come to New York more often than for me to come to Cincinnati, so my trips to Cincinnati got very rare."
   One of them was in May, 1998, when he conducted the Met Orchestra at Music Hall in commemoration of the May Festival’s 125th anniversary.
   "I’ve always loved the May Festival. The whole idea of it as something that has as much artistic interest as community social interest."
   The May Festival Chorus has become "sharper" since he was music director. "Their response is more direct and immediate. The character of the Chorus back then may have been more in the great tradition of amateur choral singing. The chorus you’ve got now is singing so well that it helps with composers who wrote technically demanding parts."
   Music Hall is "way, way up here," said Levine, raising his hand high above the table. "I can name two or three halls in the whole world that are this much better (making a small gesture). Perhaps it’s too big to have all of its seats filled at every concert, but it sure is a good place to hear."
   Since he became Boston’s music director last fall, Levine has been programming more challenging 20th-century works. This is vital, he said.
   "The way symphony orchestras have been going is very, very dangerous because the lifeblood of the culture of music is inextricably bound with new music. Always was and always will be."
   Performing new music must be done with commitment, not "in a dutiful way, with orchestras not playing it very much, the press complaining and the audience totally baffled."
   "This doesn’t mean we don’t play the old masterpieces, but we don’t play quite so many in one season, therefore they’re fresher."
   Levine’s legendary work ethic (over 2,000 performances of 80 different operas at the Met alone) has taken a toll on his health. He suffers intermittent back pain (sciatica) and a tremor in his left hand, but this has not slowed him down, he said. It has helped him refine his approach to conducting, however. He now uses a chair ("from standing up to do all those Wagner operas") and he uses fewer gestures than in the past.
   "I noticed that a lot of conductors that stuck with classical gestures did what was necessary and got a plan, a line of inspiration and technique throughout their rehearsals. That had always been my tendency anyway, so I went more in that direction and I like the results much better."
   James Levine conducts the May Festival Chorus, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music Chamber Choir and Chorale, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, with tenor Matthew Polenzani, in Berlioz’ Requiem at 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall. Tickets: (513) 381-3300.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post May 27, 2005)