The Boston Globe for Thursday, March 17th ran a lengthy front-page
article (with a "jump" to a page in Section A) about the toll that
all the excitement of James Levine's first season as Music Director is
taking on the players, especially the strings.  Boston Globe articles
go into paid archives pretty quickly, so it doesn't make sense to enter
a click-through URL, but the story echoes articles I've read elsewhere
in print and on the internet.  The placement on page one with a continuation
in the same section argues for how seriously the Globe's editors consider
the issue, and I'm sure many readers were becoming acquainted with how
difficult it is to perform lengthy and complicated works during a season,
taking into account the Pops and Tanglewood, that essentially lasts all
year.  The timing wasn't accidental; the BSO presents a concert opera
nearly every year, and this past weekend it was Wagner's "Die Fliegende
Hollander" in its entirety through three performances, March 11th, 13th
and 15th (the one I attended, and which ran from 8:05 pm through 11:00
pm).  During a meeting with Maestro Levine that dealt with the increased
workload including more rehearsal time, he agreed to some changes in
programming; there will be one-less-piece in the program immediately
following "DFH", and in the upcoming season, Robert Schumann's Fourth
Symphony will replace his Second (the latter is not only a little longer,
but contains passages of rapid-fire staccato violin parts).  In a few
weeks, the pages of the Globe will feature, um, "athletes" playing a
game called baseball, while wearing red stockings (I don't know why).
These gentlemen will spend most of a 3-hour game standing around waiting
for a ball to be hit or pitched to them before they have to move a
muscle...  symphony players, not so lucky.

"Laurence Glavin" <[log in to unmask]>