Leonard
Edward Slatkin (born September 1, 1944) is an
American
conductor. Long
associated with the
Saint
Louis Symphony Orchestra, he is now music director of the
Detroit Symphony
Orchestra.
His father
Felix Slatkin was the
violinist, conductor and founder of the
Hollywood String Quartet, and his
mother
Eleanor Aller was cellist with
the quartet. His brother, Frederick Zlotkin, is a cellist.
Biography
Slatkin
was born to a musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire
now in Ukraine
. His
brother Frederick traced the family's original name as Zlotkin, and
adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally.
Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the family lineage as
follows:
"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 1904; 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 Tchaikovsky's
Souvenir de Florence
Sextet.
When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony
Orchestra (early 1900's)."
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 when he became artistic director and conductor of the
award-winning
New York Youth
Symphony, and in 1968,
Walter
Susskind named him the assistant conductor of 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, said that one of his biggest regrets in leaving the
Saint Louis Symphony to become conductor of the National Symphony
Orchestra would be that he would no longer be able to attend
Cardinals games. He made recordings for
RCA
Records with the National Symphony until RCA abandoned new
classical recording early in the 21st 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. Slatkin received
both praise for improving the overall quality of the orchestra and
criticism for under-rehearsal of the NSO.
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. He held this post until September 11,
2004, the 110th Last Night. There were reports of tension between
Slatkin and the orchestra, whose secure finances were said to have
"fostered a culture of superiority and recalcitrance", as well as
negative concert reviews, which contributed to his short tenure
with the BBCSO. Previously in the UK, Slatkin was principal guest
conductor of the
Philharmonia Orchestra
from 1997 to 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, Slatkin
was announced as the next Principal Guest Conductor of the
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra,
and he assumed this post in 2008.
On October 7, 2007, Slatkin announced he had reached agreement on a
three-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 has
stated that he will relocate to the Detroit area. His contract in
Detroit calls for 5 weeks of subscription concerts in the 2008-2009
season, and 13 weeks in the 2009-2010 season. Slatkin conducted his
first concert as music director in Detroit in December 2008.
Slatkin has conducted a wide range of repertoire, being
particularly noted for his interpretations of 20th 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 Saint 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 that received a
Grammy Award for the Best Orchestral Performance.
On November 1, 2009, Slatkin suffered a heart attack while
conducting in the Netherlands.
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.
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. Slatkin had an affair with
percussionist
Evelyn Glennie, though
the relationship was over by 2003. In 2008, Slatkin and Hohenfeld
separated.
References
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
