Jim Tobin responded to me: >>Maybe Levine took his lead from Sergiu Celibadache's performances >>with the Munich Philharonic that Levine just left (though Levine's tempos >>have often been slow, especially recently), but that orchestra could >>sustain these tempos. > >Even a generation ago Levine could be very slow. A friend who frequented >the Met in New York told me then that early in one performance someone >high in the hall loudly called out TOOO0 SLOOOW to general amusement. >He agreed with the judgment though he regretted the rudeness. True. But it's funny about him. I remember thinking of him as a faster, slashing kind of conductor--way back when he made his first big splash. No more, as far as I can tell, and not for a while. I suspect that some of this has to do with his physical problems--kind of like Klemperer after his stroke, though I find post-stroke Klemperer more interesting than Levine, at least until the very end of K's career. Pretty good story, by the way. Roger Hecht