James Levine

[calimac]

The once-esteemed conductor died last week. Since most of the obits I've seen concentrate on the greatness of his conducting, I feel the best response is to link to my previous posts about this character.

The case of James Levine.

The case of James Levine cont'd.

Comments

[cmcmck]

They say you should look at the art and not the artist, but there are times I'm willing to make exceptions.

Richard Dadd, my home town artist, was mentally ill and Gesualdo da Venosa's crimes I can understand in the context of their times but not Levine's.

[ranunculus]

James Levine conducted at the SF Opera a lot while I was there. Thankfully I didn't hear too many rumors about him at that time. If I were to be "catty" I would say his conducting career at SF also coinciced with a union-busting attitude by management.

[adrian_turtle]

They say you should look at the art and not the artist,

What was Levine's art? He didn't sit down alone with a paintbrush, to make a piece of art that people could look at when he and everyone touched by his abuse was far away. He was a conductor. The whole point of his art was controlling musicians; directing them, teaching them, making them do what he wanted. He did that unethically, and it cannot be separated from the art.

[calimac]

There certainly is room for tyranny in conducting, and many great conductors - especially of the past - have been famously tyrannical on the job. But that didn't mean they behaved that way off the job. Toscanini, though no paragon in his private life, was particularly emphatic about the difference, and he had to be considering the tantrums he'd throw in rehearsal.

But nothing that I've read about Levine suggests that he was abusive on the podium. Instead, the driving force behind covering up his abuses off the podium was how talented and beloved he was on it. We can certainly refuse to listen to Levine if we cannot separate the man from the art (though, now that he's dead, the fact that he won't be getting any royalties from it takes away a major reason for refusing to separate. I wouldn't want to eschew the work of the long-dead Wagner or Beethoven because they were monstrous human beings.) But the fact that conducting can be pursued abusively doesn't mean that even an otherwise abusive person did so.