Dialogues and Discoveries: James Levine: His Life and His Music [Hardcover]

Robert C. Marsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1998

James Levine, the legendary conductor and artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, is one of the most public and yet most private figures in classical music. In his more than twenty-five years as maestro of the Met, Levine has carried his musical message around the world. His appearances in the opera houses and concert halls of Europe and Japan have been greeted with a fervor that not only matches but sometimes exceeds the loyalty and adoration of his fans in America.

In Dialogues and Discoveries, eminent music critic Robert C. Marsh presents the man behind the musical triumphs. From a series of interviews and conversations conducted over a period of twenty-five years with the maestro, his family, his colleagues, and his friends, Marsh brings us the private, the personal James Levine.

Levine's musical gifts were recognized early and fostered by his loving and understanding family in Ohio. Both parents had had professional careers -- his father was a musician, his mother an actress -- and they indulged and encouraged their prodigiously talented son, whether he was memorizing opera scores during elementary school recesses or designing productions with a toy theater.

By the time he was in his teens, Levine was working with the remarkable George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, where he made his debut at the age of twenty-three. Four years later, he was at the Metropolitan Opera and also served as the director of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony, for twenty-three seasons. Today he is truly, as New York magazine has said, "the Met's most valuable player." Under his guidance, the opera house has become the premier operatic stage in the world and the Metropolitan Orchestra one of the finest ensembles.

In Europe, he has been a regular conductor at the Wagnerian shrine, Bayreuth; the Salzburg Festival; and in Vienna and Berlin. In addition, he appears regularly on television and will conduct Fantasia 2000, the long-awaited sequel to the Disney classic Fantasia.

Robert Marsh has covered Levine in the concert hall, the recording studio, the opera house, and arenas and stadiums for the blockbuster Three Tenors concerts. He has produced a fascinating look at the world of classical music. Levine has known and worked with the famous musical figures of the past twenty-five years, and they all appear in Dialogues and Discoveries -- sopranos and basses, violinists and pianists, tenors and baritones.

One voice is dominant throughout, however -- that of James Levine. Here are Levine's opinions of famous colleagues, conductors, opera houses, and orchestras, as well as his assessments of the state of musical performance and the future of the performing arts. Dialogues and Discoveries is both a biography and an autobiography of one of the great musical artists of the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Levine, the bushy-haired wunderkind who has been a mainstay at the Metropolitan Opera for 20 years, and is a major player on the international operatic and orchestral scene, certainly needs a book about him, but this isn't the one. Marsh, a veteran music journalist and critic who has been a friend of Levine's for 25 years, is simply too worshipful. He characterizes his subject as not only "the most important American conductor" but also "the greatest accompanist since Gerald Moore," a man who apparently exudes love and skill from every pore and has a "smile as big as Manhattan." Much of the book is taken up with long dialogues, in which Marsh himself makes most of the running commentary and Levine acts as his dutiful straight man. There are sketches of Levine at work at the Ravinia Summer Festival, which he led for many years with the Chicago Symphony, and conducting the Three Tenors extravaganzas at the Met?including the interminable 1996 gala tribute to him, from which Marsh has culled almost verbatim every flowery compliment paid by an army of singers. Levine is an extraordinarily accomplished musician who is a true original in many ways, and about whom surprisingly little is known. A reader of Marsh's book may well be amazed at his body of work, his seeming saintliness?but will still know little about Levine beyond the fact that he was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, revered Georg Szell and sports a towel to rehearsals. Photos not seen by PW, discography.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Marsh, chief music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times for 37 years, here focuses on James Levine, long-time Metropolitan Opera conductor and one of the most familiar contemporary conductors. Levine's life story receives minor attention in this first biography in English, in part because the man is reluctant to expose his personal life but also because his life seems to be devoted to music and work. What is more important is his musical repertoire, his influence on the Metropolitan Opera, and his place in the evolution of conducting, a place earned in part through his positive approach to making music in contrast to the rages and flamboyance of others. The analyses of performances and recordings are the highlights here; these will be of interest to more serious readers in what is probably a mid-life assessment of one of today's most important conductors.AJames E. Ross, WLN, Seattle
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (October 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684831597
• ISBN-13: 978-0684831596
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,756,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worth a read, but put your critics hat on first., August 4, 1999

By 

james s. calvert, jr. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dialogues and Discoveries: James Levine: His Life and His Music (Hardcover)

About a third of my way through this book, I double-checked the back flap of the jacket cover. Was the author Robert Marsh the Chicago Sun-Times music critic, or another Robert Marsh who happened to be James Levine's publicist? The question was prompted by the persistently adulatory tone of this book - which continued right up to the last page. Indeed, much of the book reads like an expanded version of blurbs on Maestro Levine's PR copy in record advertisements in Carnegie Hall programs - "Perhaps the greatest conductor of our century..." - "A concert to enter the realms of legend..." - "A legendary recording, an instant classic, sheer perfection..." - that sort of thing.

Now, James Levine is without question one of the leading conductors of our time, and certainly the most important musical force at the Metropolitan Opera since Toscanini. Whether one likes or agrees with everything he does is beside the point; his stature as a musician and an orchestra builder is beyond dispute. I have admired the maestro since I first began attending the Met in the mid-1970's, and his Ring cycle in New York was one of my great experiences in the theatre. But much though I admire James Levine, this book is a bit much. Avering (as Marsh does) that Levine is a greater conductor than, among others, Toscanini, Furtwangler, and Bruno Walter does service neither to Marsh's credibility or Levine's reputation. Marsh really lost me when he treated the "Three Tenors" circuses as serious musical events, and his judgment that Domingo is a greater tenor than Caruso will no doubt raise some eyebrows among voice afficionados.

Most of this falls in the category of critical opinion, and Mr. Marsh is certainly entitled to his. And, as one would expect from a critic of Marsh's reputation, his opinions are generally well-informed and articulate. But readers should be aware that this is not really a "critical" look as James Levine, in the sense that it considers his positives and negatives (yes, he does have them). Of negatives there is here nary a whiff, nor would one be aware, after reading this book, that there is a significant amount of critical dissent about some of Levine's work from other quarters. (For example, look at Gramophone magazine's review of Levine's recording of "Der Fliegende Hollander," or Kenneth Furie's review of Levine's "Parsifal" in High Fidelity some years back.) And for a completely different take on the 1996 "Cosi fan tutte" at the Met, one should read Manuela Holterhoff's "Cinderella and Company." No rosy glasses here.

The best parts of the book are the "dialogues" between Marsh and Levine. Levine is an articulate and insightful commentator on matters musical, as anyone knows who has heard him in interviews. I could have done with more Levine and less Marsh in these dialogues. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the book too often resembles press-agent puffery.

Worth a read. But put your critic's hat on first.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars barely adequate, January 2, 2001

By 

J. Anderson (Monterey, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dialogues and Discoveries: James Levine: His Life and His Music (Hardcover)

Not exactly a groundbreaker in the biographical art, this book nonetheless gives an adequate account of the work of maestro Levine, if in the end very little of his real personal life. Why these books inevitably tend toward the mundane baffles me; Mr. Marsh plays the sycophant to the very end, and while controversy is not required to make interesting reading, it would seem to be a given, wouldn't it, that such unvarying adulation becomes a kind of flatulance after page 200-and-something. How often this kind of nonsense spoils what might have been an interesting look at a certainly worthy musician of our time! And Marsh is a relatively competent critic- one really expects more. This book however does manage to rise above the painful because of an extended interview section in the middle; Levine is a thoughtful and indeed a most decent chap, qualities that come through in his own comments, if not through his biographer's. Marsh is no David Dubal, however, and Levine is left pretty much to his own devices with respect to exploring his art in any substantive way. I should think he would be better served by an autobiography; Levine seems more inclined toward genuine experience than the fluff of Marsh's tiresome throes of ecstacy suggests. Not for the casual observer, but anyone with an interest in the history of the Met will find it at least not without some compensation for one's efforts.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Whose biography is it anyway?, June 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Dialogues and Discoveries: James Levine: His Life and His Music (Hardcover)

Robert Marsh does an excellent, if tedious, analysis of conductors. His prime focus is on the development and accomplishments of James Levine which are many and praiseworthy. Mr. Marsh is obviously a critic of extraordinary talents as well. (He tells you so.) The book is well worth reading.