January 2007

Reynold Levy

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Reynold Levy may be the president of Lincoln Center, the world’s largest art complex with 5 million visitors each year but, as he revealed to host Gilbert Kaplan, it wasn’t until age 32 that he got hooked on classical music. Bach did the trick. Since then, he’s come to love Beethoven and Mozart – and more recently, Shostakovich, whose war symphonies he likens to the classic novel All Quiet on the Western Front. As he labors to perfect a balancing act and gain support for Lincoln Center's own goals from the fiercely independent Met Opera, New York Philharmonic and the Center’s 10 other arts organizations, he sometimes fantasizes that he’d rather be a conductor or stand-up comedian.