Orpheus in the Gray Shades

Chicago's Ravinia Festival had not had such prestige and excitement since Seiji Ozawa stepped down as music director in 1968. Part of last week's furor was over Soprano Beverly Sills, unfurling the druidical delights of Bellini's Norma. But even more of it was over the short, pudgy, bespectacled white man with a modified Afro who ambled out to the podium and called the Chicago Symphony to work with a mighty sweep of his left fist.

He gently signaled a lyrical passage with a crook of the finger and a nod of the head. A percussive, firmly beating section found him tapping a foot and doing shallow knee bends. Whatever his body language, the playing and singing were exhilarating in their bel canto mood and color, and the standing ovation of the audience was almost anticlimactic. As Sills put it: "He's going to be one of our great American artists."

Wintry Fare. At age 30, Conductor James Levine is on his way. A virtual unknown three years ago, Levine now ranks with Michael Tilson Thomas, 28, as one of the two hottest young conductors on the American scene. Tackling such wintry fare as Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, or sitting down at the piano to conduct and play Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 12 with a crystalline joy, Levine has given this summer's Ravinia programs new musical depth as well as box office appeal.

Elsewhere in the last couple of seasons, Levine's guest conducting with the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics and the Boston Symphony has instantly won the kind of acclaim--from critics, public and musicians alike--that most conductors take years to attain. His debut recording, the complete Joan of Arc by Verdi (Angel), starring Montserrat Caballe, Placido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes, confirms the skill and flair for Italian opera that Levine has shown in two years on the podium of the Metropolitan Opera.

No young Turk hammering at the walls, Levine has a mature attitude toward both audiences and music. He intelligently interprets contemporary music, but is not about to shove it down anybody's throat. "An audience is made up of people involved in other professions, and it's asking a lot of them to keep pace with the latest things in my art form," he says.

Levine favors sporty clothes (he conducted one recent Ravinia concert in dark blue bell-bottoms and matching polo shirt) and is so relaxed that he can indulge in one of his favorite pastimes, eating, even during intermissions. Aside from his steady girl friend, a Manhattan oboist, he has no organized nonmusical interests except the Navajo rugs and dinosaur bones that he collects for his apartment overlooking Central Park. Says he: "I feel there is enough scheduling in a musician's life that I try not to regulate the other things I do."

The air of casualness is deceptive in such a disciplined musician. Too many conductors today strive for originality but end up either with mere visceral excitement or drab sterility. Levine succeeds by being disarmingly strict regarding what the score says in black and white and delightfully lyrical, like Orpheus, among the gray shades of interpretation.

When he was a toddler of two or three, black and white to Levine meant the piano keys he could barely reach but nevertheless managed to bang intelligently at his parents' home in Cincinnati. His father Lawrence, a former dance-band leader under the name Larry Lee, was working his way up to president of a dress-manufacturing firm. Until her marriage, Mother Helen had been a Broadway ingenue.

Jimmy's piano lessons began when he was four and still did not know the alphabet and could only count to ten. He had lots of toys but played only with a record player and miniature puppet stage. With these, by the age of nine, he was producing operas at home--singing, conducting and directing the entire score. He also attended the opera and symphony in Cincinnati with scores on his lap, all the while conducting with a knitting needle.

At ten, Jimmy made his debut with the Cincinnati Symphony playing Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2. He had arranged that all by himself through his piano teacher. His parents found out about it when he interrupted a phone conversation one night to shout to them: "They want to know if I want to be called Jimmy or James."

Beginning when he was 13, he spent his summers at either Marlboro, Vt., or Aspen, Colo., studying piano with Rudolf Serkin and Rosina Lhevinne respectively, but he never lost sight of his ambition to be a conductor. He went through the five-year course at Manhattan's Juilliard School in 24 months, and at age 20 auditioned for the Ford Foundation American Conductors Project. One of the judges was so impressed that he offered Levine a job. The judge was George Szell, and thus, in 1964, Levine became the youngest assistant conductor in the Cleveland Orchestra's history.

He stayed with Szell six years, made his debut with the San Francisco Opera (Tosca) in 1970, and in June 1971, filling in after the death of Fausto Cleva, made his Met debut (also in Tosca). That and his subsequent work at the Met have won him a permanent job there. This September Levine will take over formally as "principal conductor," a new post created to provide Music Director Rafael Kubelik with a full-time musical and administrative deputy. The choice is popular with the orchestra. "It sounds like a cliche," says Met Tuba Player Herbert Wekselblatt, "but from the moment he came into the house, it really was like a breath of fresh air."

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