"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"
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Perfection, Levine insists, is less a flash of genius than an accumulation of shavings on the workshop floor. The image he borrows from Verdi - “working with a file” - is deliberately unglamorous: not a baton slicing the air, not a maestro’s charisma, but the slow abrasion of daily labor. That metaphor is the point. It demotes the conductor from mythic interpreter to master craftsperson, someone who shapes sound the way a luthier shapes wood: by removing what doesn’t belong.
The stated aim is “maximum expression and communication in every style,” a line that quietly takes aim at orchestras that specialize in a house sound or a prestige repertoire. Levine’s intent is pluralist and pragmatic: if an ensemble wants to be fluent in Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and new music, it can’t rely on inspiration or a single aesthetic brand. It needs technique so internalized that it becomes flexible. Style, here, isn’t costume; it’s grammar.
The subtext is also institutional. “Collective qualities” shifts credit away from the podium toward the group, but it’s not democratic in the naive sense. Collective excellence is presented as an emergent property of disciplined repetition, which implies a culture of rehearsal that is relentless, granular, and sometimes punitive. Levine is describing an ethic that built big late-20th-century American musical machines: precision as a moral category, earned “every day, little by little.”
Context matters: coming from a conductor identified with high-stakes, high-prestige institutions, the remark functions as a defense of process over personality. It’s a reminder that what audiences hear as effortless “communication” is, in fact, carefully filed into existence.
The stated aim is “maximum expression and communication in every style,” a line that quietly takes aim at orchestras that specialize in a house sound or a prestige repertoire. Levine’s intent is pluralist and pragmatic: if an ensemble wants to be fluent in Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and new music, it can’t rely on inspiration or a single aesthetic brand. It needs technique so internalized that it becomes flexible. Style, here, isn’t costume; it’s grammar.
The subtext is also institutional. “Collective qualities” shifts credit away from the podium toward the group, but it’s not democratic in the naive sense. Collective excellence is presented as an emergent property of disciplined repetition, which implies a culture of rehearsal that is relentless, granular, and sometimes punitive. Levine is describing an ethic that built big late-20th-century American musical machines: precision as a moral category, earned “every day, little by little.”
Context matters: coming from a conductor identified with high-stakes, high-prestige institutions, the remark functions as a defense of process over personality. It’s a reminder that what audiences hear as effortless “communication” is, in fact, carefully filed into existence.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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