Levine To Be Out For Months

James Levine’s shoulder injury will require surgery, forcing the maestro to cancel the remainder of this season’s engagements with the Metropolitan Opera and the Boston Symphony. He hopes to be fully recovered in time for the BSO’s summer season at Tanglewood. Both organizations are scrambling to find replacements.

The New Great American Symphony?

It’s John Adams’ “Naive and Sentimental Music” (note it doesn’t say “symphony” in the title). “This three-movement, 45-minute ’emphatically tonal’ piece can’t escape its own nature though, though. ‘It sounds like a symphony and it behaves like one, so it probably is,’ admits Adams. Nor can its modest author escape the accolades that have followed his work.”