Levine Back on the Conductor’s Podium

James Levine, the long-time music director of the Met, and previously of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has had a long series of health challenges. These have kept him from working for  two years, but he did lead a performance by the Met Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Tomassini in the Times gave it a good review (although much of the story, which made the front page, is about the concert rather than critique). Perhaps the story is that he conducted at all, given that his lack of mobility required a motorized wheelchair. Over on WQRX, Naomi Lewin gives the performance a thumbs up, and there’s a bit of the end of the Schubert, Great C Major Symphony, which closed the concert, available in audio. It’s a long piece, perhaps a trial for anybody to conduct. (Orchestra musicians also once found it too long and exhausting.) But it sounds like both conductor and orchestra were on fine musical form.