Words matter. These are the best James Levine Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is – like Verdi said – working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra’s collective qualities emerge.
It’s just that, when the orchestra look at me, I want them to see a completely involved person who reflects what we rehearsed, and whose function is to make it possible for them to do it.
They’ve really got to recognize that all of us bring some of our family issues to work and our work home.
As major orchestras around the world are gripped in various kinds of crises and upheaval, we need to be sure that we are bringing up this new generation.
Working mothers do an hour more per day than working fathers do and working mothers do on average an hour more per day with the kids than working fathers do.
It was just that we had this phenomenal honeymoon relationship that just kept on going.
Women tend to have recognition and peer group support – recognition from friends and family that this has to be a big issue in their lives. They’re more comfortable expressing the need for support and receiving it.
Everybody blames the culture without taking responsibility.
Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.
You try on purpose to get players with different qualities which will rub off on one another.
But the important thing is to lie down and fall asleep. That little nap means you wake up fresh again and can continue.
We found that when people put this issue on the table, it turns out that men acknowledge the issue, and employers and employees can work out solutions just as working mothers do.
I have a big problem with conductors who gesture a lot.
Most people treat the office manual the way they treat a software manual. They never look at it.
Where my tastes in music are concerned, I’m a real maximalist.
What’s interesting is that both men and women are struggling with this issue in remarkably similar percentages, but the big difference is that women tend to talk about this when men keep it silent.
My hunch is that probably men are doing more both outside the home and inside the home.
I think this orchestra’s strengths involve drama and voice.
I was lucky that I met the right mentors and teachers at the right moment.
At my age, you are naturally inclined towards teaching.
The invisible dilemma is that men face the very real problem that they don’t feel comfortable bringing these issues up and they tend not to be acknowledged at work.
A lot of people get impatient with the pace of change.
Second, if you’re the boss, just because they don’t ask doesn’t mean your employees don’t have needs.
Employee fathers need to step up to the plate and put their family needs on the table.
We’re in the midst of an evolution, not a revolution.
There is no relationship between the gestures and what an orchestra will do.
It wasn’t that I ever knew I’d be at the Met for 20 years, or 30 years, or 40 years, or anything like that.
So, the total number of hours spent on the stuff you have to do to take care of a family, working and caring for stuff at home, the total number of hours is actually about the same for mothers and fathers.
I can imagine wanting to work with this ensemble and this company always.
And so, little by little, I gradually divested myself of pretty nearly all of the guest conducting I used to do, because I was at the same time working in the places like the Met, where I could work in this sort of depth.
