First of all, it was brilliant of Mr. Levine to program the Mahler First the week following his unforgettable reading of the Ninth. It showed an approach quite different from that of the Ninth. Exceptionally slow in tempo in all four movements, it had a brooding, improvisatory quality, which was the very opposite of inevitability of Levine’s Ninth. The deliberate tempi allowed the musicians to inflect each phrase with a seemingly infinite nuance and color, whether as massed strings, solo winds, or whatever else. Solo instruments confidently played with full freedom of expression. Boulez, for example, adopts slow tempi in order to penetrate the logic of the score and to explore experiments in sonority. Levine’s approach shows a certain measure of this analytical approach, but he also brings an element of feeling and expression, which recalls Bruno Walter’s Mahler. The relationship between Maestro Levine and his orchestra has developed to a point where he can experiment with differing approaches to works by the same composer. On the other hand the orchestra plays with a musicianly balance of expression and discipline that we haven’t heard in years, if ever. That performance seemed typical of the great things one can expect to hear in Symphony Hall and the Music Shed.

The Haydn symphony, his last, which is both grand and wistful, on the other hand, showed that no one on stage was infallible. Although Levine elicited a certain basic enthusiasm from the players, the performance reflected almost any decent run-through one might have heard at any time over the past sixty years from a good Central European orchestra, that is, nothing special. Soloists played with poised expression, very beautifully, but not particularly revealing in terms of Haydn’s composition. String ensemble seemed a little rough in the first movement, and textures were rather thick, lacking in transparency. The less focused acoustics of the Music Shed will do this performance no good, when it returns this summer as the only Haydn performance of the festival. BSO audiences have to wait for Colin Davis or Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos for more sympathetic performances of this subtle and complex music. I find it extremely puzzling that Levine seems to neglect the intellectuality of Haydn’s music in this way, since he is so intellectually keen himself. What’s more, he has such a deep affinity for the Second Viennese School, who revelled in this aspect of Haydn’s music. Webern was known (notorious, in fact, when he would spend entire rehearsals on just a few bars) for the pains he took when he conducted Haydn symphonies, and the conductors who championed Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg—especially Scherchen and Klemperer—excelled at exploring Haydn’s intellectual rigor and quirky imagination.