The appointment of James Levine as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, announced last month, ends the most closely watched music director search of the decade.

        Mr. Levine, 58, a Cincinnati native and the highly acclaimed artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, will become Boston's 14th music director in the 2004-05 season.

        It's an historic moment, because he is its first American-born maestro in the orchestra's 121-year history.

        Heading an American orchestra is something Mr. Levine has been considering for some time. He told the Enquirer in 1998, “I hope I have the opportunity one day to have the sort of relationship to an American orchestra that I have to the Met.”

        Speculation is high as to what it means, not only for Boston, but for America's entire orchestral landscape. The appointment caps a period of unprecedented change of leadership among America's major orchestras.

        “In a sense, it's like the old-fashioned European model of general music director,” says Ara Guzelimian, artistic adviser at Carnegie Hall. “What James Levine has done at the Met is shown the benefit of very deep, long-termed involvement. I think he is about to do that in Boston as well, and consolidate his musical life around these two very major poles.”

        The reputation of Boston — the orchestra of Pierre Monteux, Serge Koussevitzky and Charles Munch — is in need of rejuvenation. After 29 seasons under its current maestro, Seiji Ozawa, critics have complained of lackluster performances and lack of consistency.

        Boston went after Mr. Levine, the biggest prize in the conducting world, because he is an orchestra builder. He has built his “pit” orchestra — the Met Orchestra — to a level as distinguished as that of the Vienna Philharmonic.

        Boston wanted, executive director Mark Volpe says, “a conductor who could stimulate the orchestra and ultimately bring a whole set of stylistic issues, someone who had a track record of taking an orchestra and working with them over a period of time.”

        Boston, which has an operating budget of almost $70 million and an endowment of $250 million, also wanted an artistic head for Tanglewood, the symphony's summer home. Mr. Levine is noted for the years he was music director at the Ravinia Festival, outside of Chicago, leading Georg Solti's Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1972-93).

        “If you think of all the threads of his life, it's important to look at Ravinia. He did extremely inventive programs there,” Mr. Guzelimian points out. “He spent 14 years in his teens and 20s at the Aspen Music Festival, a teaching and performing institution. So all of those threads are coming together.”

        Rehearsal time was a sticking point in talks with other orchestras. But in Boston, Mr. Levine worked out an unusual deal in which he may have more rehearsal time for more difficult programs — in some cases trading for less time to rehearse music that the orchestra regularly plays.

        He told the Enquirer, “This is what I need more than anything. To develop an orchestra, you need to be able to have a lot of rehearsals at your disposal over time, so you can work on technical things, you can have section rehearsals, you can work each problem in the way that solves it best.”

        Mr. Levine, who as a youngster played with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and from 1964-70 worked with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, said he “grew up in an era that spoiled me very much. I heard great orchestras play at such a level of commitment and comprehension and personality, that I miss it when I don't hear it.”

        A champion of the complex atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, he will likely also introduce a variety of music by American composers in his new post, confirms Walter Levin, former violinist in the LaSalle Quartet and Mr. Levin's confidant and former teacher.

        “(Charles) Wuoronin, John Cage and (George) Crumb and many great composers of major works of the American scene — I'm sure those are the kind of things he will also be planning for Boston,” Mr. Levin says.

        Mr. Levine will leave his other post, the Munich Philharmonic, considered a second-tier orchestra, when that contract ends in 2004. He will retain his duties at the Met under the title of music director, implying less of an administrative load.

        Despite his schedule at the Met, where this season he'll conduct 56 performances, no one doubts that Mr. Levine, who is also a pianist, will be able to do it all.

        “In two days in September, he conducted (the operas) Wozzeck and Idomeneo on Saturday. On Sunday, he came here and rehearsed with the Met Chamber Ensemble and played the Mozart Piano and Wind Quintet. Then he rehearsed with Leontyne Price and played with her at the special added Concert of Remembrance we did for Sept. 11,” Carnegie Hall's Mr. Guzelimian recalls.

        “Those were two fairly typical days in his life.”

        Mr. Levine, who signed a five-year contract, succeeds Mr. Ozawa, who will end his 29-year tenure in April to go to the Vienna State Opera.

        And if you're keeping score, that will make two former Cincinnatians in Boston, leading two of America's most prestigious institutions. (The other is the Boston Pops' Keith Lockhart, who got his start at the CSO.)

       Contact Janelle Gelfand at 768-8382; fax: 768-8330; e-mail: jgelfand@enquirer.com.

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