The NY Times Music Critic, Anthony Tommasini, concludes his
rave review of James Levine’s return to conducting after a two-year absence on
a most peculiar note: “…you have to admire the pluck and
determination he has shown in this remarkable comeback.”
Pluck and determination are terms usually reserved for
Little Orphan Annie, and not for “one of the greatest living American
conductors.” You have to wonder
why.
Levine has returned to conducting using a motorized
wheelchair. A number of health
problems over the past several years have made it increasingly difficult for
him to walk. For the concert,
Carnegie Hall provided an elevating podium, with wood paneling designed to
match the elegant interior of the room.
Tommasini commented on these accommodations, and detailed
the careful staging of Levine’s entrances, and his pivots to greet the
audience. In describing a seeming glitch in his rotation of his chair,
Tommasini noted that this is a reminder of “how unusual it is for a conductor
to have to work out such mechanical matters.”
“This was Mr. Levine at his best,“ he wrote, and added
many particulars about the power of the conducting and of the conductor – who
“was actually bouncing around on the chair, smiling at the musicians, sometimes
singing the music audibly and looking altogether unrestrained.” All in all, he gave Levine a strong
positive review.
Levine loves his craft, loves his work. It is, in many respects, unremarkable
that he should return to it. That
is not to discount how difficult it must have been to regain the strength and
agility he needed, but to acknowledge what was likely Levine’s capacity to see
himself doing what he had always done, in a different way.
The boldness of Levine’s imagination is familiar to many
disabled people. In the face of so
much evidence that being an actor, or a doctor, or a teacher or a conductor is
not the province of people with significant impairments, many plow through and
do it. Tommasini’s reductive
“pluck and determination” barely covers that complexity, and his terminology
diminishes the potency of an otherwise glowing review of Levine’s conducting
triumph.
