Dave Read

Casting details have been posted for 2009 Williamstown Theatre Festival schedule.

2009 Williamstown Theatre Festival reviews:

• True West – July 16, 2009
• Children – July 2, 2009

WTF Main Stage – 2009 season

Children by A.R. Gurney directed by John Tillinger
July 1 – 12

Tony-nominee John Tillinger directs this timeless Gurney classic set in a large summer home on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. When an estranged brother’s return and a mother’s impending marriage recall painful memories of their father’s death, seething arguments reignite one family’s struggle with its tragic past and uncertain future.

True West by Sam Shepard directed by Daniel Goldstein
July 15 – 26

Former Boris Sagal Directing Fellow Daniel Goldstein directs a cast including former WTF Apprentice Nate Corddry and his real-life brother Rob Corddry as the squabbling siblings in this Pulitzer Prize-winning play. This modern classic is an explosive exploration of family rivalry as two very different brothers attempt to sell Hollywood their version of the great American Western.

The Torch-Bearers by George Kelly directed by Dylan Baker
July 29 – August 9

Tony-nominated stage and screen actor Dylan Baker directs a cast including Becky Ann Baker and Tony Award-winner Marian Seldes in this side-splitting 1920s farce in which a troupe of amateur actors rehearse and perform a show-stopping new play-or try to with all their might. Their stage is riddled with comedic drama, suspense, and good old-fashioned witty mayhem, similar to both Noises Off and Boeing Boeing.

Quartermaine’s Terms by Simon Gray directed by Maria Aitken
August 12 – 23

Tony-nominated director Maria Aitken directs a cast including Tony-nominee Mary Beth Hurt, Simon Jones and Tony Award-winner Jefferson Mays in this charming and heart-felt 1960s comedy about an endearingly eccentric group of English teachers in Cambridge whose insatiable quest for knowledge has masked their secret longings for passion, romance, and true happiness.

WTF Nikos Stage – 2009 season

Knickerbocker by Jonathan Marc Sherman directed by Nicholas Martin
World-Premiere July 8 – 19

Are you ready? The question looms over Jerry as the months tick by and his unborn son grows from the size of a peach to the size of, well, a baby. As the birth date creeps ever nearer, will the advice, encouragement and warnings of friends and family make Jerry more or less ready? The awe and terror of becoming a new parent shines through Sherman’s newest play as he examines whether one can ever truly be ready for parenthood. Artistic Director Nicholas Martin directs this world-premiere.

What Is The Cause Of Thunder? By Noah Haidle directed by Justin Waldman
World-Premiere July 22 – August 2

After 27 years on the same soap opera, Ada is starting to confuse her art and her life. But after so many years of acting, her art is her life. Haidle’s poignant comedy brings us the hilarity of day-time drama alongside the harsher, but often equally funny, realities of life. Festival Artistic Associate Justin Waldman directs this world-premiere.

Caroline In Jersey by Melinda Lopez directed by Amanda Charlton
World -Premiere August 5 – 16

Caroline is down and out in New Jersey. She’s having a nervous breakdown, her career as an actress is tragically dwindling, and a peculiar stranger has made his presence known in her new apartment. Can she find a way to conquer it all? This funny and touching new play follows one woman’s whole-hearted attempt to accept the past and take hold of the future, despite the many surprises that might pop up along the way. Festival Artistic Associate Amanda Charlton directs this world-premiere.

Summary details of the 2009-10 season at Shakespeare and Co., Lenox, MA (Shakespeare and Co. season overview):

• Review: Twelfth Night – July 31, 2009
• Review: Measure for Measure – July 22, 2009
• Review: Hamlet – June 26, 2009
• Review: Pinter’s Mirror – June 14, 2009
• Review: Golda’s Balcony – June 17, 2009
• Review: Bad Dates – Feb. 1, 2009

Hamlet – Founders’ Theatre – June 26 – August 28

• Review of June 26 performance of Hamlet at Shakespeare and Co.
• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Eleanor Holdridge
• Cast includes Jason Asprey, Nigel Gore, Dennis Krausnick, Kevin O’Donnell, Tina Packer, Elizabeth Raetz, others TBA.

Excerpt from our review of the July 2006 performance of Hamlet at Shakespeare and Co. : “… Jason Asprey in the leading role provides a sympathetic, deeply moving, strongly articulated character. His Hamlet is torn by grief and indecision. At the gaily dressed court, he wears, as he will throughout the play, only black—the mourning for the lost father dominating, even before he is ghost-begged to revenge him.”

Othello – Founders’ Theatre: July 3 – September 6

• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Tony Simotes
• Cast includes John Douglas Thompson and Michael Hammond, others TBA

Excerpt from our review of the 2008 production of Othello at Shakespeare and Co. : “The current Othello now playing in repertory on the Founder’s stage through August 31 is the best production of tragedy that I have ever seen there.”

Twelfth Night – Founders’ Theatre: July 24 – September 5

• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Jonathan Croy
• Cast includes Kevin O’Donnell, others TBA

Written in 1604, Twelfth Night unfolds in Illyria, a land of obsession, lusty clowns, and mistaken identity. The play opens with the love-sick Duke Orsino pining away for the unattainable Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, a shipwreck that separates a twin brother and sister (Viola and Sebastian) delivers young Viola onto Illyria’s shores. Thinking her brother dead and seeking employment with Orsino, Viola disguises herself as a man (Cesario) and promptly becomes Orsino’s servant. The only part she had not planned on was falling passionately in love with him…and the Countess falling just as hard for her.

Shirley Valentine – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: May 27 – 31, and September 11

• By Willy Russell
• Production assisted by Jenna Ware
• Cast: Tina Packer

The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon – Bernstein Theatre: June 3 – 14, and Sept. 12

• By David Bridel, Penny Kreitzer and Jonathan Rest
• Directed by Jonathan Rest
• Cast: Penny Kreitzer

The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon tells the remarkable story of an astonishing artist who fled Nazi Germany to France in 1939, only to be apprehended by the Gestapo in occupied Vichy in 1943. In the interval, she created a startling artistic oeuvre: 1325 notebook-sized gouache paintings, accompanied by textural narration and operatic musical cues. She arranged 769 of them into scenes and acts and titled this epic Life or Theater? (Leben? Oder Theater?). At the age of 26, shortly before she was arrested by the Gestapo, Salomon gave her works to a trusted friend, saying, “Keep this safe. It is my whole life.” Soon thereafter she was taken to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.

This provocative work is structured as a play-within-a-play, telling the true story of a group of actors who attempted to present Salomon’s story at the Jerusalem Festival in 1982. They struggle to present a truthful voice, in the face of the differing views of Charlotte’s stepmother Paula Lindberg, a famous opera singer at the time. As the story unfolds, Lindberg is forced to confront truths about herself, her relationship with her deceased stepdaughter, and the artist’s responsibility in the world. The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon is based on actress Penny Kreitzer’s experience as a member of that troupe.

Golda’s Balcony – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: June 17 – July 3, and September 13

• By William Gibson
• Directed by Daniel Gidron
• Cast: Annette Miller

Excerpt from our review of the opening performance of Golda’s Balcony, May 18, 2002, at Shakespeare and Co.: “The opening performance of William Gibson’s Golda’s Balcony at Shakespeare & Co.’s Spring Lawn Theatre showed that theatre can be miracle. Taut and deft as Gibson’s The Miracle Worker of 45 years ago, Golda’s Balcony is a masterpiece, in monologue form; 95 supercharged minutes brilliantly acted by Annette Miller and directed with sensitivity by Daniel Gidron. This play seems destined to move on to Broadway and then into the text books.”

Romeo and Juliet – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: May 21 – June 7

• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Jonathan Croy
• Cast: Paul D’Agostino, Ben Brinton, Kaitlin Henderson, Alyssa Hughlett, Kelley Johnston, Sean Kazarian and Daniel Kurtz

This is a 90-minute production featuring a seven-member cast who take on multiple roles, placing the focus on a clear and powerful delivery of Shakespeare’s text. The production is modeled after Shakespeare’s own touring shows, which took to the countryside when the plague shook London and closed down the theatres.

Pinter’s Mirror: A slight ache, Family Voices, and Victoria Station – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: June 11 – August 2

• By Harold Pinter
• Directed by Normi Noel
• Cast include Elizabeth Ingram, Malcolm Ingram, and others TBA

“Sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.” – Harold Pinter

Three brilliant one-act plays commemorating and celebrating the incisive voice and darkly comedic insight of Harold Pinter, an artistic genius and treasure who passed away last year. Performed by Elizabeth and Malcolm Ingram, it’s a rare opportunity for audiences to see and hear two exceptionally trained and gifted actors put life into Pinter’s taut language, tense pauses and deeply clever sense of meaning behind the words we say and the conversations we never have.

Lunch Box Shakespeare:Measure for Measure – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: July 10 – Sept. 5

• By William Shakespeare
• Directed by Dave Demke
• Cast: S&Co.’s 2009 Performance Intern Program participants

As it did when first performed at the start of 17th century, this tale can still, within a few minutes, engage an audience of every age. Perhaps there’s even more appreciation and recognition of character today than ever. Isabella, a naïve and inexperienced girl must choose between the death of her condemned brother Claudio or give up her virginity to Lord Angelo, a corrupt, minor politician who can commute the sentence.

Devil’s Advocate – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: July 30 – August 16

• Written by Donald Freed
• Directed by Dee Evans
• Cast includes Ignatious Anthony and Dennis Krausnick

Shakespeare & Company presents the North American debut of Devil’s Advocate, the story of Manuel Noriega’s one night of asylum in the Vatican Embassy before surrendering to the U.S. military waiting outside. It won the 2006 PEN Award for Drama. This two-hander features S&Co. Founder, Director of Training and actor, Dennis Krausnick, and the UK’s Mercury Theatre Company’s Associate Artist, Ignatious Anthony.

The Dreamer Examines His Pillow – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: August 7 – September 6

• By John Patrick Shanley
• Directed by Tod Randolph
• Cast includes John Douglas Thompson, and others TBA

Donna has broken up with her boyfriend, but can’t let him go. Dad has lost Donna’s mother, and can’t paint anymore. When Donna drops by for the first time in a few years, the confrontation between father and daughter will open up complex, ancient questions about women and men, sex and truth, art and love, and forever alter the course of both their lives. John Patrick Shanley’s work for stage, screen and television has been highly celebrated; he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the film Moonstruck, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play for his 2005 play Doubt: A Parable.

White People – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: August 21 – September 4

• By J.T. Rogers
• Directed by Anna Brownsted
• Cast includes Michael Hammond, and others TBA

What does it mean to be a white American? What does it mean for any American to live in a country that is not the one you were promised? White People is a controversial and darkly funny play about the lives of three ordinary Americans placed under the spotlight: Martin, a Brooklyn-born, high powered attorney for a white-shoe law firm in St. Louis, MO; Mara Lynn, a housewife and former homecoming queen in Fayetteville, NC; and Alan, a young professor struggling to find his way in New York City. Through heart-wrenching confessions, they wrestle with guilt, prejudice, and the price they and their children must pay for their actions. White People is a candid, brutally honest meditation on race and language in our culture.

The Hound of the Baskervilles – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: September 26 – November 8

• By Steven Canny and John Nicholson
• Directed by Tony Simotes
• Cast: TBA

This American premier finds Holmes and Watson connecting straight to the funny bone in an hilarious adaptation of the Conan Doyle classic. Performed by three actors playing multiple roles, with multiple accents and quick-change beards, in this ghostly story Sherlock finds the villain and gets belly laughs. Created as an audience treat, in the finest British beer hall tradition, it is sprinkled with visual and verbal gags, pratfalls and gaffs; an hilarious spoof on Sherlock, Dr. Watson and the Victorian literary genre.

Cindy Bella (or the glass slipper) – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: Dec. 3 – 20

• By Irina Brook and Anna Brownsted
• Directed by Irina Brook
• Cast: TBA

Cindy Bella (Or The Glass Slipper) is a magically updated spin on the classic folk tale Cinderella. It is a contemporary, urban, romantic fairytale of Cindy, a streetwise accordion player with an unconquerable love for music, singing and dancing, and the very handsome, cosmopolitan Prince who falls head over heels for her. Her hard-as-nails stepfather and outrageously wicked stepsisters try to stand in the way of their love, but a modern-day fairy Godmother shows up to help save Cindy’s dream. Cindy Bella (Or The Glass Slipper) was presented as a work-in-progress for two special performances last year, and now returns for its world premiere.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses – Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: January 29—March 14, 2010

• By Christopher Hampton
• Adapted from the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
• Directed by Tina Packer
• Cast includes Elizabeth Aspenlieder, others TBA

Full of devious plotting, sexual intrigue and morally ambiguous motivations, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) was ahead of its time as a novel in 1872 and still may be ahead of its time today. This rich and deviously delightful adaptation is like a decadent chocolate you just can’t resist.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) is adapted from the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Though de Laclos wrote under the patronage of France’s most powerful aristocrats (Marie Antoinette was said to be a big fan of the book), his morally ambiguous book was re-interpreted by some after the French Revolution as a subversive dig at the Ancien Regime. British playwright Christopher Hampton adapted it for the stage in 1986, causing a sensation and winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play.

Family friendly, Outdoor Bankside Festival: June 1 – September 6

• Around the grounds, the Banksyde Terrace, and in the tented, outdoor Rose Footprint Theatre

In 1590 in Shakespeare’s London, the southern shore of the Thames River, called The Banksyde, was home to brigands, brothels, rogue businesses, and an explosion of theatrical creativity not seen before or since. Londoners would cross the river to experience plays, contests, shows, and to participate in the creation of a new language and a new way of looking at the world.

Join the festivities at the south end of the property and on the banks surrounding Founders’ Theatre, Founders’ Alley, and the Rose Footprint, where you’ll find poets, dancers, musicians, and capering clowns. Josie’s Place will be open before and after all performances, offering light fare and drinks for purchase. Picnickers are welcome on the grounds. The walking paths will be open at the north end of the property.

Toad of Toad Hall – Rose Footprint Theatre: June 20—August 29

• By. A. A. Milne
• Adapted from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
• Directed by Irina Brook
• Cast: TBA

This delightful play excerpts the story of Mr. Toad from the beloved children’s classic, The Wind in the Willows. Focusing on Toad’s adventures in the book—including his imprisonment, escape, and daringly successful efforts to win back his home—this is a rollicking tale sure to delight old, young, and anyone in-between. It is performed in two parts, on alternating performance days, with both parts performed on Saturdays.

Word Play – Outdoor Rose Footprint: August 13 – September 6

• By Dennis Krausnick
• Director: TBA
• Cast includes S&Co.’s 2009 Performance Internship Program participants

This world premier, written by Company Director of Training, actor, playwright and Founding member Dennis Krausnick, is an outrageous splash of Shakespeare. This fast-paced performance offers startling bits of some of Shakespeare’s silliest and startling insults with just the right dash of fact, folklore, and surprises thrown in. It is a virtual feast of language that is accessible, provocative, informative, poignant, and always engaging. Presented by the Company’s renowned Training Program, the show runs under one hour.

Shakespeare & Young Company

• Founders’ Theatre: May 9, May 10
• Outdoor Rose Footprint: August 19, August 21

From Romeo and Juliet to Hamlet, no writer has captured the desire, volatility and energy of adolescence better than Shakespeare. In his words, youth lives eternally. For these two special days, join our Young Company actors aged 13-17 as they perform Shakespeare’s works with a fierce and fiery temperament to match his own; and deal with life themes that make teenage years so formative, individual and indelible–filled with unbridled passion for friendship, love, justice, and hope.

Studio Festival of Plays – Founders’ Theatre: September 7

A full day and night celebrating five different, compelling plays presented as readings or staged readings by Company artists. The annual festival introduces the next generation of great plays and performers. Several Studio scripts have successfully gone on to become full productions at S&Co., including last year’s The Goat Woman of Corivis County, and other popular titles such as Martha Mitchell Calling, No Background Music, Golda’s Balcony, The Scarlet Letter, A Tanglewood Tale, Wit and this season’s The Dreamer Examines His Pillow and White People.

The Declaration of Independence – Outdoor Rose Footprint: July 4, at 3pm

This is the Company’s traditional community reading of the document that heralded the birth of democracy in the New World. With eloquence that Shakespeare might have envied, inspired by the philosophical thought springing directly from the intellectual ferment of the English Renaissance, the 18th century American colonist Thomas Jefferson penned a political statement as complex and controversial as history itself.

Preludes – outdoors on the Prelude stage, on the Banksyde Terrace beside Founders’ Theatre at 6:45 pm

Preludes run prior to all Founders’ Theatre evening shows beginning June 1. Pre-show fun for the entire family to enjoy! Dances, combats, Shakespeare, song and other ten-minute surprises presented by our very own Company artists.

See also: Romeo and Juliet returns May 21-June 7

Tickets, brochure for the 2009-2010 season at Shakespeare and Co.

To receive a season brochure, purchase tickets and gift certificates, or inquire about discounts and further information, please contact the Shakespeare & Company Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the website at www.shakespeare.org or by e-mail boxoffice@shakespeare.org.

Shakespeare and Company, the Berkshires’ theatre company founded in Lenox 32 years ago has announced an ambitious schedule for the 2009-10 season, Tina Packer’s final season as Artistic Director. Ms. Packer will turn her focus to the long-term vision of the Company, and to her own acting and writing, upon the arrival in June of her successor and co-founder Tony Simotes. He is a long-time Company actor, director, and fight choreographer whose first job here was as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed in the Company’s first season, at The Mount, in 1978.

At-a-glance: season details Shakespeare and Company 2009-10 season

plenty of Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Company’s 2009-10 schedule includes reprisals of Hamlet and Othello featuring most of the casts from the plays’ original Lenox, MA productions. The real-life family trio, Tina Packer, Jason Asprey, and Dennis Krausnick, will reprise their roles in Hamlet alongside Nigel Gore and many other returning actors. Review of June 26 performance of Hamlet at Shakespeare and Co.

John Douglas Thompson and Michael Hammond return for this season’s production of Othello, directed by Tony Simotes.

This year’s mainstage comedy will be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, with Jonathan Croy making his mainstage directorial debut, with Kevin O’Donnell playing Malvolio.

The 2009-10 season ropens on May 21st with a special two-week run in the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre of Romeo and Juliet, capping off its five-month New England Tour of Shakespeare to young audiences across the Northeast. It will be directed by Jonathan Croy, with original music by Company member Marc Scipione, this Romeo and Juliet. Later in the season, the Company will introduce a new program, the Lunch Box Shakespeare Series, presenting Measure for Measure in the Bernstein Theatre, as performed by the best and the brightest of Shakespeare and Company’s young professional actor training program.

remembering Harold Pinter

The season also offers a special program titled Pinter’s Mirror, honoring the taut short plays of Nobel Prize-winner Harold Pinter, who died last year, with three celebrated one-act plays, Victoria Station, Family Voices, and A Slight Ache.

Pinter’s Mirror features Elizabeth Ingram and Malcolm Ingram, and will be directed by Normi Noel. Other provocative new works include the Pen Literary Award-winning Devil’s Advocate by Donald Freed, and The Dreamer Examines His Pillow, by the multiple award-winning John Patrick Shanley, starring John Douglas Thompson.

introducing the Diva Series

The Diva Series will be three one-woman shows playing for limited engagements. Annette Miller reprises her role as Golda Meir in Golda’s Balcony, a special dedication to William Gibson to celebrate his voice, tremendous body of work, courage and the inspiration he remains. Packer makes a special return engagement as the feisty and insightful titular character in Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine. The series also includes the devastatingly powerful new work The Actors Rehearse the Story of Charlotte Salomon, featuring newcomer Penny Kreitzer.

These three plays are special events meant to focus attention on the Capital Campaign currently being conducted to complete the Production and Performing Arts Center, including the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre. “The Diva Series is about three feisty ladies, and it celebrates one beautifully committed woman, Elayne P. Bernstein,” says Packer.

Bankside Festival

The family-friendly Bankside Festival includes Irina Brook’s uproarious production of Toad of Toad Hall by A. A. Milne, adapted from Kenneth Grahame’s beloved novel The Wind in the Willows, at the Outdoor Rose Footprint Theatre, as well as a newly launched, increasingly dynamic and jam-packed Bankside Lecture Series; specially designed Preludes (before evening performances at Founders’); special musical events; the much-loved reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th; and other enhanced efforts to rally and celebrate the young people of the community. The always-popular Gala will be held amid the Berkshires’ autumn splendor, on October 10.

fall and holiday season shows

Following a jam-packed summer season, the year continues with an exciting fall show—a Tony Simotes-directed farcical take on the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles—plus a newly added holiday season production, Irina Brook’s direction of Cindy Bella (or the Glass Slipper), and a winter production of award-winning Les Liaisons Dangereuses directed by Tina Packer, featuring this season’s Bad Dates star Elizabeth Aspenlieder, a show that stretches Shakespeare & Company’s upcoming season all the way to mid-March of 2010.

Tickets for the 2009-2010 Season will go on sale the morning of Thursday, March 5. To receive a season brochure, purchase tickets and gift certificates, or inquire about discounts and further information, please contact the Shakespeare & Company Box Office at (413) 637-3353 or visit the website at www.shakespeare.org or by e-mail boxoffice@shakespeare.org.

By Karl Henning

James Levine and Mark Volpe of the Boston Symphony Orchestra met with the press at Symphony Hall in Boston on Feb. 19, 2009 to announce both the maestro’s course of 14 concerts for the 2009-10 Symphony Hall season, and the release of recordings documenting the current musical partnership.

One bittersweet touch at Opening Night relates to the retirement this August of harpist Ann Hobson Pilot: she will be the featured soloist, playing a John Williams commission, On Willows and Birches, on Opening Night (23 Sept.), again in New York’s Carnegie Hall for its Opening Night gala (1 Oct), and again in Boston (3 Oct).

Other premieres to awaken at Levine’s baton over the coming season will include: Peter Lieberson’s Farewell Songs for baritone and orchestra, sung by acclaimed Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley; a Double Concerto for violin & cello by John Harbison, with soloists Vera Wang & Jan Vogler; and a Flute Concerto by Elliott Carter, featuring Elizabeth Rowe, the BSO’s Principal Flutist.

Indeed, fans of the centenarian composer have the pleasure of three Carter works next season — the others being Mosaic for harp and ensemble, and Dialogues for piano and orchestra. The overall sense of celebrating the jubilee was subtly underscored by the room’s décor, a collection of photos and MS. pages of score dedicated to Mr Carter. (One group photo which it was poignant to regard yesterday showed the late Lukas Foss standing at the right, in evident high spirits.)

Maestro Levine managed the subtle wizardry of announcing something which is in principle something of a commonplace, as somehow a novelty; for one of the anchors of his 14-concert season is a complete traversal of the Beethoven symphonies to be performed in tight succession over four programs, between October 22 and November 7.

The senses in which this is “a first” are perhaps technicalities: this marks the first time that the BSO will have performed all nine in a single season; and in the tangled skein of how various pieces have gotten programmed over the decades of the maestro’s career, somehow Levine has never yet conducted the Fourth Symphony.

all Levine’s B.S.O. concerts have been recorded

It has been no secret that all of Levine’s concerts with the Boston Symphony have been meticulously recorded. It has also been apparent to many concert-goers that the orchestra has been making some exciting music over this time. In future, this will probably be praised as sound marketing acumen, for anticipation has certainly created some fund of demand. Then, too, this is all the more reason for the maestro and Mr. Volpe to get the roll-out right.

Mr Levine recounted that, as they were planning the method of the recordings’ availability, there was some suggestion that all should be download-only. Levine succeeded in lobbying for the release of two of the titles on compact disc.

Why the delay, when the orchestra has flourished in its partnership with Levine, and has been on an arc of clear ascent? Before digging into the question of specific releases, Levine wanted to build a rapport with the group. The maestro then told out three ruling criteria behind the specific programs:

1. He wanted to release repertory for which there is not already a glut of available recordings.
2. As Levine succinctly put it, “When did we have a really exciting night in the Hall?”
3. Levine wanted at the outset that the recordings made available should include some of the new music being written for the Boston Symphony.

Brahms and Ravel CDs released; download Mahler and Bolcom

Thus, the two compact discs hot off the press (and also available as downloads): Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem (recorded September 08), and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, complete (recorded October 07). The two programs released yesterday for download only: Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (recorded October 08) and two works by William Bolcom, the Eighth Symphony and the Lyric Concerto for flute and orchestra (recorded February/March 08 and September 06, respectively).