Marcello, Rozhdestvensky, Levine, 2018

June 18, 2018.  Marcello, Rozhdestvensky, Levine.  Benedetto Marcello, a gifted Italian composer of the late Baroque, was born on June 24^th of 1686 in Brescia.  We’d like to get to his interesting Requiem in the Venetian Manner, but for now we’ll direct you to our earlier entry about Benedetto and his brother Alessandro, as we have more urgent topics.

First, some sad news: Gennady Rozhdestvensky, one of the best Soviet conductors, died on June 16^th in Moscow.  Rozhdestvensky was born on May 4^th of 1931 into a musical family: his father was the noted conductor Nikolai Anosov, his mother – a singer, Natalia Rozhdestvenskaya.   Gennady studied the piano with Elena Gnesina and Lev Oborin and, later, conducting with his father.  He was only 20 when he found himself on the podium of the Bolshoi conducting Sleeping Beauty. From 1961 to 1974 Rozhdestvensky was the music director of the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra.  He was also the music director of the Bolshoi Theater Orchestra.  From 1974 to 1985 he was the music director of the experimental Moscow Chamber Music Theater, where he supervised performances of the old Baroque and Classical operas, and also productions of modern operas rarely if ever heard in Russia, like Stravinsky’s The Rake Progress and Shostakovich’s The Nose.  Contemporary composers were of special interest to Rozhdestvensky: he often performed works that, if not banned, then were clearly not favored by the Soviet music establishment: Stravinsky, Poulenc, Orff, and the Soviet nonconformist composers like Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke.  Rozhdestvensky was also a raconteur: very often, before conducting a piece, he would turn toward the audience and deliver a witty introduction.  Nobody else did it back then, which probably was a good thing, as few had his knowledge, sense of humor and storytelling skills. 

In 1974 Rozhdestvensky was hired as the director of the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic, the first Soviet conductor to lead a European orchestra.  Later, he worked with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony.  He was invited to conduct many major orchestras: the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Chicago Symphony.  Among his numerous recordings are all of Shostakovich and Prokofiev’s symphonies and also all of Bruckner’s, in different editions.  Gennady Rozhdestvensky is survived by his wife of many years, the pianist Victoria Postnikova. 

And now another date, that could’ve been joyful but isn’t.  On June 23 James Levine, who lead the Metropolitan Orchestra for 40 years, will turn 75.  A conductor of enormous talent, two years ago he was credibly accused of sexually abusing his students and younger colleagues.  This is terrible, and our perception of his art will never be the same.  Levine had a brilliant career, which started with his apprenticeship with George Sell at the Cleveland, whose assistant he soon became.  Guest-conducting major orchestras followed, as did a long association with the Chicago Symphony (he was the music director of the Ravinia Festival for 20 years).  In 1971, he was invited to conduct the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in Tosca; a year later he was offered the position of Principal conductor and in 1975 became the Music Director.  He built the orchestra into a world class ensemble, which, except for the Vienna Philharmonic, has no rivals among opera bands.  His 1990 Ring cycle, with James Morris, Christa Ludwig and Siegfried Jerusalem, telecast on PBS, was a cultural event.  All these achievements are now clouded.  For a while the Met itself engaged in a Soviet-style rewriting of history, eliminating any mention of Levine on their Our Story page, as was discovered by the NY Times; since then, his name has reappeared.