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Neville Marriner At 80

“Sir Neville Marriner, who has just turned 80, has made more than 600 recordings of 2,000 musical works, a greater legacy than any maestro except Herbert von Karajan (whose 900-odd stack contains much repetition). But where Karajan was a global media player with something going in every metropolis, Marriner played in the second fiddles of the London Symphony Orchestra and gave maestros a hard time. He was one of the lads and by no means the quietest.”

Levine: So My Health’s A Mystery?

James Levine is amused that his health has suddenly become an issue. “`It seems to be a mystery to everybody,’ he said, how a tremor that’s affected his left arm for more than 10 years suddenly became so newsworthy. Through this `crisis,’ Levine – who’s been artistic chief of the Metropolitan Opera for nearly three decades – has been busy conducting Wagner’s four-night, 20-hour trilogy of operas known as the `Ring’ cycle.”

Maligned Musicians Drop Lawsuit

“Violinists from Bonn’s Beethoven Orchestra have decided not to go ahead with their groundbreaking legal action in which they were suing for higher wages because they felt they played more than their colleagues in the woodwind and brass sections. [The musicians] agreed to drop their lawsuit, originally scheduled to have been heard by a labour court in Bonn on Thursday, and try and negotiate a compromise with the city authorities instead.” The violinists had been widely ridiculed worldwide for their complaint, although many of the critics seemed unaware that many orchestras already pay string players extra salary, or allow them additional time off to compensate for the higher workload.

Schwartz: Levine’s Just Fine

Lloyd Schwartz says that all the breathless speculation about James Levine’s health is much ado about nothing. “Levine’s BSO performances have demonstrated no apparent diminishment of energy or quality. He conducts sitting down, but he’s far from the only major conductor to do so… Several musicians from the Met orchestra, who refused to be named, claimed that the maestro gets tired toward the end of five- or six-hour Wagner operas. Well, duh! — who wouldn’t? But has it hurt any performances? … Is this front-page news? Musicians who were happy to be identified, both from the Met and from the BSO, had nothing but praise for Levine’s musicianship, conducting technique, and energy level.”

News Flash: 6-Hour Operas Are Hard Work

Justin Davidson is amused by the New York Times’s breathless tone in describing the supposed physical deterioration of James Levine. “A few musicians in the Met orchestra have noticed that, halfway through a six-hour performance of Wagner’s Die Walküre, the workaholic maestro was liable to exhibit symptoms of fatigue. If so, he is still showing the strain less than one 37-year-old critic with nothing more arduous to do than sit and listen. Suddenly, we are all vicarious hypochondriacs, listening to Levine’s performances for signs of his decline.”

The Downside Of Freeing Sculpture

Sculpture can be whatever it wants these days – there’s no defining aesthetic or style that has to be followed. “The down side is, if sculpture can be anything, then maybe it is not anything in particular. It loses a sense of tradition, identity and purpose. And it becomes hard for people to care very passionately about it (the way many people still care about painting), much less evaluate it. If you think that artists, like children, need limits, you may not like what has become of sculpture.”

The Two Jansons(s)

Mariss Jansons decided to leave the Pittsburgh Symphony mainly because of travel fatigue. So how will he cope with the fatigue of leading two of Europe’s top orchestras simultaneously? Very carefully: “I’ve come to one conclusion, which is to cut myself into two conductors. One works in Amsterdam, the other in Munich. Some might say, ‘You are Mariss Jansons. You can’t be two different people.’ Yes, I agree, but I can still try to work for the interests of both orchestras – repertoire, touring, everything. I’m very objective. This is my principle and I’ll try to follow it.”