James Levine took over as music director of the Munich Philharmonic at the beginning of the 1999-2000 season. It was a surprising career move by a conductor who, as artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, already occupied one of the most powerful positions in the musical world, for the Munich Philharmonic would never feature in a list of Europe's leading orchestras. Their appearance together at the Barbican confirmed their status as more of a promotion contender from the Nationwide First Division than a Premier League band in their own right.
Whether Levine will be able to give the orchestra the time needed to ensure that promotion remains to be seen. At present there are some fine features to their playing - especially the characterful wind, very central European in its sound, and the tonal depth of the strings in sustained passages - but also some worrying insecurities, which were revealed in Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces more than the Mozart and Tchaikovsky symphonies that flanked them in the programme.
Levine's Mozart, though, is not to everyone's taste. Using an orchestra with five double basses and 14 first violins, this was a brazenly conservative account of the E Flat Symphony No 39, the kind of interpretative anachronism one thought had collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity years ago. Themes in the first movement were presented with Brahmsian monumentality, the Andante was full of slithery, over-manicured phrasing, the rhythms of the finale galumphed where they should have danced. All perfectly horrid, but at least the concert could only improve from that deeply unpromising start.
It did to a certain extent in the Berg, for Levine inhabits that expressionist world very securely. But the lines were never teased out with the clarity they need, and uncertainties in some of the playing, especially in the final March, took the edge off an internal drama that really should grab the audience by the throat. Only in Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony did the Munich Philharmonic really begin to show their true worth. The sound was often magnificent - rich and gleaming, the woodwind and brass contributions incisive - but there was still something rather stolid about it all: rhythms that remained earthbound, phrases that were sculpted when they should have been sung; not inventive, inspirational music-making at all.
