E-Mail This Article to a Friend Here at last James Levine begins his tenure at the BSO; plus Boston Baroque’s Giulio Cesare and Maurizio Pollini BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

"I’m awfully glad they wanted me," James Levine told the guests at the post-opening-night-gala dinner, " ’cause I sure did want them." Three years after he signed on to be the BSO’s next music director, Levine inaugurated his tenure with a soul-stirring performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the so-called Symphony of a Thousand, though it fell some 700 short of that vast number of participants — orchestra, chorus, soloists — who performed the 1910 Munich world premiere. Not that the volume of sound at Symphony Hall was much diminished. The repeated joke during the intermission was, "Could you hear okay?"

Intermissions are actually rare between symphonic movements, and Levine’s program note mentions that Mahler himself included a break between the exhausting "Allegro impetuoso" of the first movement (the first time, Levine speculated, such a tempo marking was ever used) and the hushed beginning of the even longer and more expansive second part. What’s the last time a BSO director wrote a program note that dealt with the nature of the music being played? At the dinner, BSO board chair Peter Brooke said that 30 years was a long time to wait for this new director. Did he mean to say three years? Or has he really been waiting, like some of us, more than 30 years for a musician of distinction and serious stature to lead the BSO?

The press received a rare invitation to come to part of a rehearsal the day before the opening, and though the maestro’s remarks were hard to catch, it was startling to hear him begin by asking the players whether there were any passages they had questions about. "The second movement!" one jested. They then went over many short segments, getting each phrase to breathe better. One moment that got particular attention was the final chord, which got tighter and more emphatic — more conclusive — with each repetition.

The choice of the Mahler Eighth was remarkable. It’s one of the hardest pieces in the classical repertoire, and not all the music is on an equal level of inspiration. Much of it, especially in that "impetuous" first movement, seems forced, as if Mahler were desperately searching — hoping — for inspiration in setting the ninth-century hymn "Veni, creator spiritus" ("Come, Creator Spirit"). What makes it work is less its beauty than its sheer power and speed. Levine conveyed that power. And the significance of making a prayer for creativity the first official gesture of his new position can’t be underestimated. One of the evening’s most moving moments was the standing ovation that greeted the maestro when he first entered. Another was the standing ovation at the end.

Levine assembled a cast of operas stars, mostly from his Metropolitan Opera, including such notable Wagnerians as British soprano Jane Eaglen and heroic tenor Ben Heppner, soprano Heidi Grant Murphy raining down benevolence from the second balcony, the excellent Korean-American Mozart soprano Hei-Kyung Hong, mezzo-soprano Yvonne Naef, baritone Eike Wilm Schulte, and — maybe best of all — bronze-voiced mezzo Stephanie Blythe, firm of purpose, stentorian when necessary, yet touching, too. The soprano mainly needs to hurl high C’s out over the orchestra and chorus, and Eaglen did just that, though her voice was not especially beautiful and at times not especially steady, either. Except for one momentary crack, Heppner was superb, showing no other sign of strain, though apparently the following night he ran into more persistent vocal trouble. Bass John Relyea was also impressive, though he sounded a little stiff. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the American Boychoir were wonderful in opposite ways — the former for its groundswells of massed sound, the latter for its purity and delicacy. Both groups sang without scores.

The second part opens with the most ravishing music in the symphony — a kind of pastoral idyll that sets up the allegorical final scene from Goethe’s Faust, arguably the greatest piece of German poetry. Angels and anchorites, sinners and penitents sing praises and blessings as Faust is forgiven and his soul transcends the sins of the flesh. After the rush of sound in the first part, Levine and the orchestra scaled back to an enchanting intimacy, simultaneously earthy and unearthly in its quietude — a landscape interwoven with prayers and hymns. You could hear the footsteps of the anchorites and the friendly lions prowling on tiptoe. This calm is pierced by occasional outbursts of pain. It’s a place where, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "all were good/To me, God knows. . . . Only the inmate does not correspond."

This was some of the most exquisite playing I’ve heard from the BSO, and it was matched by the rising and falling waves of the final chorus, that ecstatic lullaby, reaching upward yet pulled downward, up till the final starry release (and ending with a brilliant, commanding chord). Levine never called attention to himself. His focus was so completely on the music, and he took me so deeply into it, I almost forgot he was conducting. I don’t love this symphony, and I can’t say he changed my mind about it, but the way he shaped it, the way he built it so inexorably, and the quality of the playing he got all made me love the things in it that I love more than I’ve ever loved them before.