Leonard Slatkin

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Leonard Edward Slatkin (born September 1, 1944) is an American conductor. His father was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet, Felix Slatkin, and his mother was Eleanor Aller, the cellist with the quartet. His brother, Frederick Zlotkin, is a cellist.

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[edit] Biography

Slatkin was born to a musical family originally named Zlotkin that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine.[1]

Slatkin studied at Indiana University and Los Angeles City College before attending the Juilliard School where he studied conducting under Jean Paul Morel. His conducting debut came in 1966, and in 1968, Walter Susskind named him an assistant conductor at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. He stayed there until 1977, when he was made music advisor of the New Orleans Symphony.

He led a series of Beethoven festivals with the San Francisco Symphony during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These annual concerts, held during June, included the orchestra's final concert in San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House in 1980, which featured a performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony. He has continued to guest conduct in San Francisco since this time.

Slatkin returned to Saint Louis in 1979 as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. The national profile of the orchestra increased notably under his tenure. In 1985, he recorded the first digital stereo version of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker with the SLSO. (This was also the first complete Nutcracker issued on compact disc.) He remained there until 1996, and was named the SLSO's conductor laureate after his departure. His recorded work with that orchestra was represented on RCA Records, EMI and TelArc. Slatkin, a big fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team,[2] said that one of his biggest regrets in leaving the St. Louis Symphony to become conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra would be that he would no longer be able to attend Cardinals games.[citation needed] He made recordings for RCA Records with the National Symphony until RCA abandoned new classical recording early in the twenty-first century.

He was the director of the Blossom Festival of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1990-1999. In 1996, Slatkin became music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In 2004, it was announced that his tenure with the National Symphony will conclude in 2008.[3] Slatkin received both praise for improving the overall quality of the orchestra and criticism for under-rehearsal of the NSO.[4]

In 2000, he became the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. In 2001, he was only the second non-British person to conduct the Last Night of the Proms (Sir Charles Mackerras had been the first in 1980). This performance occurred in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and included changes to the traditional second half of the concert.[5] He held this post until 11 September 2004, the 110th Last Night. There were reports of tension between Slatkin and the orchestra, as well as consistently negative concert reviews, which contributed to his short tenure with the BBCSO.[6] [7] Previously in the UK, Slatkin was principal guest conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra from 1997-2000 and made a series of digital recordings for RCA with them, including the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams. In 2004, the Los Angeles Philharmonic named him "Principal Guest Conductor at the Hollywood Bowl" for a two year period; he was subsequently given a third year in the position, with his tenure ending in September 2007. In 2005, he became the principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London.

In 2006, he was named the music advisor to the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. In that capacity, he conducted the inaugural concert of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center on September 9, 2006. In June 2007, it was announced that Slatkin would become the Principal Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra beginning in 2008.[8]

On October 7, 2007 in Detroit, Slatkin announced he had reached agreement on a 3 year contract, followed by a two year option, to become the new music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, beginning with the 2008-2009 subscription season. Slatkin said he will move his family to the Detroit area and plans, eventually, to lead up to 20 of the orchestra's 26 subscription weeks.[9]

Slatkin has conducted a wide range of repertoire, being particularly noted for his interpretations of twentieth century American and British composers. His compositions, including The Raven (1971) for narrator and orchestra after Edgar Allan Poe, are little known. In addition to his earlier St. Louis recordings for RCA and EMI, Slatkin has conducted several recordings for the Naxos label, including the first commercial recording of William Bolcom's Songs of Innocence and of Experience.[10]

[edit] Honors

In 1990, Leonard Slatkin was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. On October 27, 2006, the Jacobs School of Music announced that Slatkin will be joining the faculty at Indiana University where he will teach conducting and composition part-time.

[edit] Personal life

Slatkin has been married three times. His first two marriages, to Beth Gootee and to Jerilyn Cohen, ended in divorce. He and his third wife, soprano Linda Hohenfeld, married since 1986, have a son, Daniel.[11]

He had a widely-publicised affair with the profoundly-deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie.[12]

[edit] Interviews

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Fred Zlotkin Reminisces: about growing up in the Slatkin household with parents Felix and Eleanor Slatkin and brother Leonard Slatkin", The Felix Slatkin Website. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.  "The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felix's father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin, who came to settle with relatives in St. Louis in 1913; he (or the clerk at Ellis Island) changed the name. He probably came from the town of Mogilev [now Mohyliv-Podilskyi], from a shtetl (the Russians forced most Jews to live in villages outside of the major cities)...The Altschuler [Aller] side of the family is really rife with musicians. Grisha's uncle, Modest Altschuler, was a cellist (making me 4th generation) and he had quite a career. Among other things, he did the St. Petersburg premiere of Tchaikowsky's "Souvenir de Florence" Sextet. When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony Orchestra (early 1900's). "
  2. ^ Mark Stryker. "The Slatkin Connection", Detroit Free Press, 25 July 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-25. 
  3. ^ Tim Page. "Slatkin, NSO to Part in 2008", Washington Post, 18 Nov 2004. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  4. ^ John Pitcher. "Maestro of His Domain", Nashville Scene, 12 July 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  5. ^ Andrew Clements. "Prom 72/ Last Night of the Proms", The Guardian, 17 September 2001. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  6. ^ Geoffrey Norris. "Who'll pick up the baton?", Telegraph, 20 July 2004. Retrieved on 2007-04-28. 
  7. ^ Charlotte Higgins. "'Grumpy? What's that?'", The Guardian, 2 February 2005. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  8. ^ Tim Page. "Slatkin Also To Conduct In Pittsburgh", Washington Post, 15 June 2007. Retrieved on 2007-07-18. 
  9. ^ Lawrence B. Johnson. "Slatkin to take the baton at DSO", The Detroit News, October 7, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  10. ^ Andrew Clements. "Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience: Soloists/ University of Michigan Musical Society/ Slatkin", The Guardian, 29 April 2005. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  11. ^ Nicholas Wroe. "Star-spangled Promenader", The Guardian, 14 July 2001. Retrieved on 2007-08-02. 
  12. ^ "Profile: Leonard Slatkin: Last night of the maestro who hit a wrong note", The Times, 2004-09-12. Retrieved on 2007-10-10. 

[edit] External links

[edit] Interviews

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Detroit Symphony Orchestra Music Directors

Weston Gales (1914) · Ossip Gabrilowitsch (1918) · Victor Kolar (1940) · Karl Krueger (1944) · Paul Paray (1951) · Sixten Ehrling (1963) · Aldo Ceccato (1973) · Antal Doráti (1977) · Günther Herbig (1984) · Neeme Järvi (1990) · Leonard Slatkin (2008)
v • d • e
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Directors

Joseph Otten (1880) · Alfred Ernst (1894) · Max Zach (1907) · Rudolph Ganz (1921) · Vladimir Golschmann (1931) · Edouard van Remoortel (1958) · Eleazar de Carvalho (1963) · Walter Susskind (1968) · Jerzy Semkow (1975) · Leonard Slatkin (1979) · Hans Vonk (1996) · Itzhak Perlman (2002) · David Robertson (2005)
v • d • e
National Symphony Orchestra Music Directors
Hans Kindler (1931)  · Howard Mitchell (1949) · Antal Doráti (1970) · Mstislav Rostropovich (1977) · Leonard Slatkin (1996)
v • d • e
BBC Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductors

Adrian Boult (1930) · Malcolm Sargent (1950) · Rudolf Schwarz (1957) · Antal Doráti (1962) · Colin Davis (1967) · Pierre Boulez (1971) · Rudolf Kempe (1976) · Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1978) · John Pritchard (1982) · Andrew Davis (1989) · Leonard Slatkin (2000) · Jiří Bělohlávek (2006)