Music Commentary: What Are the BSO Trustees Thinking?

I’ve been going to BSO Open Rehearsal for some 50 years at Tanglewood and can’t remember ever having as alienating an experience as I and over 1,000 other attendees had Wednesday night at Symphony Hall.

By Helen Epstein

According to the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) website, “Open Rehearsals are offered at a discounted price from the actual performance ticket prices . . . Patrons should be aware that these performances are working rehearsals in which the conductor may stop the orchestra to rehearse specific passages of the music that the conductor considers to require more refinement. Conductors may choose to repeat or omit movements or works.”

Ailing BSO conductor James Levine: He has every right to run rehearsals as he sees fit; his goal is a good opening night; it’s management’s decision—not the conductor’s—to transform a rehearsal into a profit-making venture.

I’ve been going to BSO Open Rehearsal for some 50 years at Tanglewood and can’t remember ever having as alienating an experience as I and over 1,000 other attendees had Wednesday night at Symphony Hall, watching James Levine rehearse Mahler’s Ninth. This is the symphony that Mahler wrote after one of his daughters had died and he himself was near death. I was interested to hear Levine conduct the music, how he would work on it, what he would tell the musicians.

Mr. Levine, whose deteriorating health was painfully apparent, made his way unsteadily to the podium where he tried to make himself comfortable in his swivel seat. Although he had access to the same microphone with which other conductors have addressed the audience, Levine ignored it for most of the evening. He greeted the audience, then rehearsed the approximately half-hour long first movement with a few stops. Then he called for an early intermission that lasted half an hour.

After orchestra and audience reconvened for the last three movements of the symphony, there was little music—perhaps 5 minutes? Mr. Levine chose to lecture on details of dynamics and character to the players—at least that was what I was able to make out from my tenth row orchestra seat.

Onstage, orchestra members fidgeted, stared into space, or surreptitiously talked with one another—but they were paid to be sitting there. The paying audience began to leave—first old and infirm people, then impatient students, then whole rows emptied out. My companion and I stayed till the end, hoping against hope to hear some more music. The family in front of me—tourists from Italy—hadn’t gone to the BSO website and had bought four tickets at $25 apiece.

“Is this what open rehearsal means in America?” they asked.

Instead of a concert, they and the rest of us were treated to a kind of reality show: the spectacle of a gravely ill man abusing his paying audience. My musician son argues that Levine has every right to run rehearsals as he sees fit; his goal is a good opening night; it’s management’s decision—not the conductor’s—to transform a rehearsal into a profit-making venture. Their only mistake was not making the specifics of this clear to ticket-buyers at the box office.

Huge mistake, I think. Concertgoers who had anticipated an unusual evening didn’t hear much music. Nor did they hear what the Maestro had to say. We witnessed what has become an embarrassment to Boston: an extraordinary gifted but perverse, petty dictator protected by a powerful institution.

Judging from the rush to the doors and the comments I overheard, those of us who stuck it out to the end were unforgiving, particularly when the Maestro reached the end of his inaudible directions to the orchestra, swiveled to face the audience, and grinned. It was a cold night. We will all think again before buying tickets to an Open Rehearsal. And give the Italians a refund!

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Helen Epstein is the author of several books on Kindle about performers and cultural life.

11 Comments

  1. Jim on February 25, 2011 at 11:38 pm

    I’m sorry, but I’ve been attending concerts and open rehearsals in Boston for nearly as long as you and I’ve also been hearing this same tired complaint for that entire length of time. Complaints about open rehearsals did not begin with Mr. Levine’s tenure here and I suspect the complaints won’t end once he’s gone. Some of us actually appreciate the opportunity to sit in on a real rehearsal. If you want to hear a finished performance than that is what you should buy a ticket for rather than whining because a rehearsal was actually a rehearsal.

  2. Scott Rose on February 26, 2011 at 10:35 am

    Maestro Levine gives highly-detailed verbal instructions to his musicians during rehearsals, because that is how he gets them to know precisely what he wants. If you visited a movie set while the movie was being filmed, you would likely hear the director giving detailed verbal instructions to the actors and in any event, you certainly would not be seeing, or have any reasonable grounds to expect to be seeing, a finished movie. You really should rethink your use of the phrase “petty dictator” because your use of it says more about you than about Maestro Levine.

  3. James on February 26, 2011 at 12:25 pm

    This was a REHEARSAL, not a performance. Your son is right — Mr. Levine has every right to conduct it as he wishes, because rehearsals are, by their very nature, for the benefit of the orchestra rather than an audience. The orchestra is kind enough to let people sit in, because there are many (musicians, students, etc.) who benefit and appreciate the chance to observe.

    To call Mr. Levine a “perverse, petty dictator” who “abuses his audience” because he didn’t run his rehearsal like a concert is stupid and shameful.

    I would have been grateful to hear Mr. Levine’s comments to the orchestra, because I’m sure they were extremely valuable.

  4. Shepherdess on February 26, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    This nasty little entry (“petty dictator”?) concerning the extraordinarily talented Mr. Levine says everything about the writer. If you want to hear Mahler’s 9th Symphony performed whole, pay for and attend the scheduled performance!

    Having said that, I think someone should suggest to Mr. Levine, as gently as possible, that given his ongoing health concerns, that he step down from his Boston post because he simply can no longer handle it. Over the years I like many have been fortunate enough to hear him conduct some of the most glorious opera and symphonic music, but it’s clear that two posts are too many at this stage of his career, and it might be best if he concentrated on the Met, where he is beloved, rather than Boston. Some of whose patrons, like the writer, have neither sympathy nor patience in the face of true genius. Come home to New York, Mr. Levine, and husband your talents to their best effects.

  5. Adam Cole on February 26, 2011 at 6:39 pm

    There is a difference between an “open rehearsal” and a rehearsal. The point is that the audience be included. This is not a publicity stunt. It is educating the audience, giving them a chance to learn why it is they should attend concerts in the first place. If the maestro does not want to give an open rehearsal, the maestro should take that up with the management. I think that would be a mistake, however, given that most people have little reason to attend a concert these days.

    • jim on February 27, 2011 at 11:48 am

      re: Comment #5: “most people have little reason to attend a concert these days”

      It seems to me that people have just as much reason to attend a concert today as they have ever had. There is no sound system or recording technology that can duplicate the experience of sitting in a hall as magnificent as Boston’s Symphony Hall and hearing an orchestra of the caliber of the Boston Symphony. It is an experience that nurtures both the soul and the mind. I have been attending concerts in Symphony Hall for over 40 years and I never enter it’s doors without feeling a thrill. It is a privilege and a pleasure. What more reason could one want for attending a concert?

      Sadly, I must admit that if you had reworded your post to say “most people have little INTEREST IN ATTENDING a concert these days” it would have been both more accurate and more disturbing.

  6. helen epstein on February 28, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    Sorry, I was away and couldn’t respond earlier to these comments.

    In the interim, as several management announcements and Maestro Levine’s cancellation of his Mahler 9 concerts make clear, the conductor was not in any shape to conduct the Open Rehearsal that I attended. The audience was not informed of this, as we would have been if, say, a soprano had a cold but was going to perform her operatic role despite it!

    I had asked for and received press tickets to what was certainly not a “working” rehearsal. The conventions of an “open” rehearsal are that the audience hears music interrupted by the conductor’s corrections, changes, comments, etc. That was not what happened on Wednesday night. I think James Levine is a genius and I have been deeply moved by many of his performances. I am also saddened that a man my age, at the peak of his artistic powers, is incapacitated. But that does not excuse management for holding hundreds of polite concertgoers hostage in an all but silent Symphony Hall for 45 minutes, hoping to hear some of what they came for. “Petty dictator” may have been an inaccurate inference. But I’m not sure it was too strong a term. And I stand by the rest.

  7. Dan Farber on March 1, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    Interesting that Ms. Epstein, whose writings have otherwise implied a universal compassion for those who suffer, feels only for herself (not Mr. Levine) and the loss of a concert at open rehearsal prices.

  8. Susan Erony on March 3, 2011 at 11:41 am

    Like some of the other writers, I have also attended many wonderful open rehearsals at the BSO. I never had an experience as described by Ms. Epstein and was quite shocked to read her piece. Knowing Ms. Epstein’s integrity and honesty, I have no doubt that her description is accurate if bluntly written Her bluntness is one of the reasons I follow her work.

    It does sound as if the problem was one of management. The situation with Mr. Levine is a difficult and unfortunate one. However, if no one speaks up for those in the audience about inappropriate management policies, the audience has no voice other than to leave. It seems to me that courageous commentary from informed and intelligent critics is vital, and in this case, perhaps one of the reasons the BSO and Mr. Levine came to a decision about his tenure.

    Finally, like myself, many who attend open rehearsals do so because regular ticket prices are so high. Ms. Epstein’s compassion for those people is notable. Artists, no matter how great, are not exempt from having a responsibility to those who appreciate and pay to experience their work.

  9. Terry on April 22, 2011 at 8:52 am

    We witnessed what has become an embarrassment to Boston: an extraordinary gifted but perverse, petty dictator protected by a powerful institution.

    These words are quite outrageous. I suggest that Ms. Epstein should edit herself before she vents. An embarrassment to Boston ? Not the conductor, surely, but this unprofessional journalist.

    • Stuart Howard on July 30, 2014 at 3:12 pm

      I am sorry that I have come several years too late to Epstein’s “review” of an open rehearsal in 2011.
      Is she kidding? Has she ever EVER spoken to orchestra members in Boston or all over the world about Maestro Levine? Has she EVER spoken to solo players and singers? The care and education and experience that go into a performance and every single rehearsal that he conducts is legendary.

      Get over yourself, Epstein.

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