July 9, 2024 • 52 mins
Internationally renowned composer and conductor Leonard Slatkin believes that the arts have the power to transform us – and his life and body of work exemplify this belief. Slatkin has served as the Music Director of the St. Louis, Detroit, New Orleans, National and Lyon Symphony Orchestras, Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London, and Principal Guest Conductor of countless others. Raised in a musical household, he is the son of violinist, conductor and film composer Felix Slatkin and Eleanor Aller, first chair cellist at Warner Brothers Studios. Both were members of the Hollywood String Quartet and contributed to some of the great film scores of old Hollywood. As a result, Stalkin was surrounded by music from an early age - learning several instruments while young and attending The Juilliard School. He went on to build an impressive career, including six Grammy wins and the National Medal of the Arts. Slatkin is the author of several books on music and conducting, most recently “Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century - A Study Guide for Conductors.” He also served as host of the weekly radio programs “The Slatkin Project” and “The Slatkin Shuffle.” Leonard Slatkin shares with host Alec Baldwin what it was like growing up surrounded by icons like Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra in his home, discusses how he contributes to an orchestra as its Music Director and reflects on what it means to be part of a musical dynasty.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio for my guest today. Music runs deep.
His parents played together in the Hollywood String Quartet and
(00:26):
helped create some of the great film scores of early Hollywood.
He grew up with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra,
and Nat King Cole swinging by the house playing music
with his family and friends. He would go on to
become the internationally renowned conductor and composer that we know
him as today, Leonard Slatkin. This is Slatkin conducting the
(01:00):
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra performing Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture. He has,
(01:21):
at one time or another conducted virtually all of the
leading orchestras in the world. As music director, he led
the New Orleans, Saint Louis, Detroit, and National Symphony Orchestras.
He has served as principal guest conductor in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cleveland,
and Los Angeles. A six time Grammy winner, Leonard Slatkin
(01:43):
also hosted a weekly radio show and has written several books.
I wanted to begin by learning more about his pedigree
Slatkin's mother, Eleanor Aller, was a first chair cellist at
Warner Brothers Studios, and his father, Felix Slatkin, was a
via eldinist, conductor and concertmaster at twentieth Century Fox.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Concertmaster is, after the conductor, the most important person to
an orchestra. Yes, they get the a from the ebo
and the orchestra tunes, but they're responsible for setting up
all the boeings, those up and downs, for the kind
of things that are played off the string. When the
conductor has a comment, it goes to the concert master,
(02:27):
who then passes the information on to the rest of
the orchestra. The concert master is usually selected by the conductor.
It's changed because the business has changed. Now the orchestras
themselves try to pick the person they think will be leader.
So remember a conductor, as a music director is only
there maybe twelve fourteen weeks of the year, but the
(02:47):
concertmaster is there all years. That person becomes the real
confidant to the music director and the conductor. They're the
ones responsible for the overall sound of the orchestra. When
the music director is not.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
There, call any of the films that he performed the
scores to.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
The ones that people might have seen or heard. But
you're going back now to the late thirties right through
the fifties. So my father was the violin soloist in
a film called How Green was My Valley? Course, great film,
and in a funny way, the one that was the
most intriguing was the old nineteen fifty three, The Day
the Earth Stood Still, And the reason for that was
(03:25):
it was the first use ever of an electric violin.
The score was done by the legendary Bernard Herman, who
did all those scores for Hitchcock. But the electric violin
was new, hadn't existed yet. And as my father told it,
and there's a photograph of it when you go into
the Fox offices, my father is standing there playing what
looks like a piece of wood with strings on it.
(03:47):
It does not look like a violin. And in order
to get the right sound and balance, the loud speaker
was in another studio, so my father really couldn't hear
himself while he was playing this with a bow, with
a bow with a bow. Marvelous score and all that's
like d it's all the electric violin and something called
the Ferryman, which exactly very good. They are that way,
(04:12):
and this was like the first really important electronics score
for any films. So those two films, but there's another
one that I think is even more interesting because you
can see my father. You remember How to Marry a Millionaire?
Of course nineteen fifty one or three, you forget if
you watch that before the film starts. They tried to
replicate what happened at a Hollywood premiere. In those days,
(04:35):
the studios owned the movie theaters in La so there
ere eleven studios. There was a Fox Theater, there was
a Warners Theater, there was a Paramount Theater, et cetera.
The red carpet was there, the search lights were on
when you went into the theater for premieres those days.
The orchestra from the studio was playing Wow. The new
concept I think it was CinemaScope that was introduced with
(04:57):
this film. Instead of having the orchestra there, they filmed
the orchestra. So the conductor, Alfred Newman, who is that
of Fox, comes out, takes about, turns around, and he
leads the orchestra in the overture Newman Street scene, and
you see my dad, and you see the entire twentieth
century Fox Orchestra playing and It's Just Marvelous on film
as an overture to the film itself.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Now, you were born in Los Angeles? Was and your
dad had he been born there as well?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No, my dad was from Saint Louis. He was born
in nineteen fifteen. He was a child prodigy. He played
a recital full recital when he was twelve years old.
He was heard by the leading pedagogue for violin in
the country, man named e From Zimbalis, the father of.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Junior Stephanie Zimbolis is a friend of mine. Well I
knew their father was a talented He was.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
An incredible violin teacher. All the great Roland studied with
him at the Curtis School. My father, at the age
of twelve went to Philadelphia, youngest student ever to be
taken to the school, stayed there for three years. Then
announce has got in the way. He came back to
Saint Louis, played for three years in the orchestra there
and then moved the family out to La Why because
(06:09):
he went to the music director of the Saint Louis
Symphony was a man named Vladimir Goldshman asked for a
five dollars raise and didn't get it, and he said,
that's it. I'm done. Went out to La. There he
was heard by several people, including Alfred Newman, who at
that time was at Warners. Newman invited to play in
the Orchard. The composer absolutely, and the Newman family, of course,
(06:33):
is astonishing. When you go from Alfred to Randy to
Tommy to David, all the Newman's are in music. And
there's something very cool coming up for me in June
because I'm going to go out to LA to do
a project. You know the name Robert.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Peake, I know, but you're doing Live to picture, yes.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And no, Okay. The first half of the concert is
a representation of this guy who made the posters for
iconic films Superman, Apocalypse, now Silverado. All those posters we
all know this guy drew them. So the first half
we're going to play the music that goes with that film.
But he also did original art one for the World's
Fair here, other things like that. So we have ten
(07:17):
current film composers including Marco Beltrami, Jeff Beio, so many others,
and they've created original pieces with these new pictures. The
cool part is that before we do the show at
Disney Hall we record this where do we record it
on the Fox sound stage where my dad played? And
(07:38):
another composer who's involved in this is Maria Newman, the
youngest daughter of Alfred. So this unbelievable connection is going
to come to fruition. And my son Daniel, who's a
composer for film and television, who will be with me.
Three representations of Slack on site. And the twentieth sound
stage is the same as it was back then. It's
(07:58):
the one sound stage they changed. All the equipment is new,
but everybody thought this is the ideal set. Named after anybody,
it's Alfred Newman, sounds Dame.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
They all named after something. Now you pick up an
instrument for the first time. I've read at the age
of three, and what I want to answer, I want
to ask two questions about your memory, which is that
I could can't remember a single thing from my life
when I was three. Maybe four or five kicked in,
but three would be a stretch from me. And I'm wondering,
do you recall in any way what it was like
(08:29):
for them to hand this thing to you and you
to explore that.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I remember that I wanted to do it. Why because
I wanted to be like my father. Of course, I
remember the first few lessons on the violin, and I
played on I think when I was four at Sears
Roebuck downtown. The teacher that I had a little recital
(08:53):
for all of his students, and I sort of remember
that because in those days I was frightened of elevators
and we had to go up to like the fifth
floor or something, and they didn't want to go in
the elevator. I don't know why I can manage all
you've overcome. I do know that my father tried to
teach me a little bit, and that didn't work. It
never does. Parents should not teach their kids an instrument.
(09:15):
My mother tried it with my brother. Dad didn't work,
so for and so on. So anyway, I did that
for maybe four or five years, playing violin, and I
realized I just was not going to be as good
as my father. I knew it early on, started at
three and wanted to stop. Win.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
How OLDE seven? So how does a seven year old say?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I quit?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I remember you like I quit the but this now,
how do you do? You walked right up to him
and said I can't do this anyay.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Well, it wasn't really a problem because my parents saw
that I was much more interested in going out and
playing baseball with my friends. I just didn't have the
desire for it. And yet right after I stopped playing violin,
I knew I wanted to take up piano, and piano
I studied with my uncle better idea than my father.
(10:02):
My uncle was also connected with the studios. He was
one of the staff pianists at Warners and if you
can imagine, my mother was the first cellist at Warners.
We'll get into that in a second. You have to
imagine la if you don't know those who are listening here.
We lived in the Wilshire Librea district, and that was
(10:23):
about three miles from the twentieth century Fox studio where
my dad was, and three miles as you went into
the valley where Warners was, so the house was equidistant.
We could get to that. My uncle, you know him.
If you've seen more or less the Warners films from
the late thirties through the mid sixties, particularly, there was
(10:44):
a wonderful old horror film called The Beasts with Five Fingers.
Robert Alda and Peter Lourie going either was the hand,
I tell.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
You it was the hand.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
There's a great film. It's my uncle's hand in the film,
really fantastic. He told us wonderful stories about how they
did it back then, how they made it look like
it really was a dismembered hand playing the piano. My
uncle had to be under the piano, under it and
reach his left hand up to play in that direction.
It was by George. He did it, I judge you did.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So he was there and I studied with him, and
I was headed off to somebody else. I kind of
kept at the piano. But at one point, maybe when
I was fifteen or sixteen, I just knew that I
wasn't good enough. Not so much competition with my uncle,
but I heard too many great pianists. I just knew
(11:37):
I wasn't gonna be good for that. So I stopped
and I picked up the viola. Nobody else in the
family played it. The viola is kind of like the
violin with a thyroid condition. It's a little bit larger,
diabetic diabetic violin. I love the viola because the viola
in an orchestra sort of usually sits in the middle
of everything. It's playing lines that often the audience doesn't hear.
(12:00):
And I loved being part of this texture, playing the
stuff that was interesting for the harmony, sometimes the melodies.
So I enjoyed the viola. And then I moved into
composition after that. And here I had the opportunity to
study with an incredible teacher, the same guy who taught
all of the great film composers, whether it was John Williams,
(12:20):
Jerry Goldsmith, Olmer Bernstein. This man was named Mario Castnuovo Tedesco,
and like so many people who came to LA, he
was escaping the war and came and settled in LA
and became a composer for films using various surnames. He
didn't use his own name for these a lot of
B films. But he was a fantastic teacher. Really was good,
(12:41):
and I thought I was going to be a composed.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
He was based aware eventually that people would find him well. Well,
he had a house in Beverly Hills, but he was
not in a studio. No, no, they were. By the
time I was studying with him, the studio system had collapsed.
This was due to the McCarthy hearings in fifty six
when all eleven studios were under heavy fire because nobody
(13:04):
else could get jobs at those studios, although they employed
five hundred musicians between them, and the eventual decision came
down that no, we need to just make it all
open for everybody. Now two hundred musicians worked playing at
all the studios.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It was horrible. It was terrible. I ever thought about it.
I remember the anti trust. Yeah, we had at our house.
There was an opposition group called the Musicians Guild which
opposed the union in this particular matter, and they would
have meetings at our house. My brother and I were
told if anybody ever asks you, just say. People came
over to play cards. The union was headed by a
(13:38):
guy named James Petrollo, name you might know.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
And he was like a union head o Patrollo.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, this man came to negotiation sessions and would
pull a gun out of his pocket and put it
on the desk, say okay, where do we start. That's
how tough it was.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Conductor Leonard Slatkin. If you enjoy conversations about the elemental
skills of inducting, check out my episode with Raphael Pire.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
When I go into an orchestra, especially for the first time.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Let's see how the sound of the orchestra reacts to
my beat, and let's see what we can do together.
Every orchestra has a specificity and there's something that is
different and with everybody, and yet it will see how
with the chemistry that would happen on the stage, how
much it could be ben It's like a dancer party.
You know how fast you can do and how you
(14:28):
can go from one place to the other, makea twirl.
But it's just all about that kind of trust.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Happening to hear more of my conversation with Raphael Pire,
go to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break,
Leonard Slatkin shares what it was like growing up around
Frank Sinatra. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(15:10):
the Thing. This is Leonard Slatkin conducting the Saint Louis
(15:36):
Symphony Orchestra performing Leroy Anderson's The Typewriter. Leonard Slatkin's musical
family were performing at the height.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Of old Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I wanted to know if his parents group, the Hollywood
String Quartet, were named for their work on film scores.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It started just after they were playing in the studios,
and that's the reason they had their name. The other
two musicians in the quartet also came from the studios.
They were advised not to use that as a name
because back then Hollywood was simply movies. That was it,
and they felt you can't be taken seriously if you
used that name. But they said, we would not have
(16:15):
a way to earn a living and be a quartet
if it wasn't for the city proud of it, so
they stuck with that. They existed from about nineteen thirty nine,
I think had to stop because of the war, and
then they reassembled in the late forties and went through
to about nineteen fifty nine. Their career was primarily on records.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Before the Hollywood Drikure. They didn't meet at the Hollywood drinkquet.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
They were already a couple when they sort of played well.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
My parents met actually in a very strange way. There
was a competition at the Hollywood Bowl for young musicians
and my father won, and my mother was convinced this
was a fixed competition. So her father, who was also
a cellist teaching my mom said maybe we should go
to the concert and here so they went and my
mother said, yeah, okay, he plays well. I still think
(17:04):
this was fixed for him. They went backstage. My mother
was like really aggressive, strong person, and she just confronted
my father, and my father asked her out for coffee,
and two years later they got married. That's funny. That's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Well, what I love about the story when you discuss
your family, I can tell how integral it is to
you and how proud you are of them. What it
leads me to think is and then eventually you became
a conductor, the job where you tell all those people
what to do. Here is my chance to go back
in an edible way and pick a guy who reminds
me of my father and tell him a little quieter please.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yes, Well, I like to equate the conductor's role to
more or less the coach or manager of a sports team.
You have your musicians, let's just say one hundred for
sake of saying it, somebody has to say how it's
going to go right? You can say quiet. But in music,
of course, there are degrees of quiet. We have ultra
(18:00):
of pianisimo, or we raise it up a little bit
to piano then we go to metzo piano, then metso forte,
then forte fortisimo. The whole range of things comes up.
Our job as a conductor is to look at the
music and say, Okay, what is the composer trying to
tell us? But as opposed to the people who are playing,
we only have our hands and a stick. We don't
(18:21):
make a sound. Most of what we do, to me,
not to everybody, but to me, is to show with
our hands, with our faces, with our bodies, what the
music is trying to convey. Some conductors just like to
talk a lot. Orchestras hate that they do, do not
like it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
What do they talk about?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Just the things I'm saying to you. My teacher in
New York, Man named Jean Morel, had a wonderful way
of describing it. He said, when you watch a concert
and there's a conductor on it, turn the sound off
and see if you can tell what piece they're conducting
from their gestures. That's right.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, I'm not anywhere near you know your level of
knowledge and so forth. But like for me, when I
started collecting, there was a recording where Burns Team plays,
and literally I looked at all my other Tchaikowsky six.
I always have multiple versions in my phone, and I
watched this and I go, I mean, I couldn't believe it,
not with applause.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I don't think like he does.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
The final movement, it's ten minutes longer than the one
I have before. Ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, how is that possible? Well, it's very interesting sometimes
what we do with an audience there is timeless and
we don't think about how long or short it is.
It just works for the people who building, and then
it gets put on a disc and it's horrible. That's
happened to me constantly. I'll finish something and I go,
(19:45):
you know, it's really good. I can't wait to hear
it back, and then somebody gets me a copy of it.
In the old days of pirated versions, I go, well,
that was terrible, wasn't it, But not on that night
in that time. It's kind of like when you do
a play. You'll come out and say that I did this,
so nailed this, and other people are going, oh, it
wasn't that good, but you felt something on stage.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I love this idea that you in the room and
doing it live in the in the symphony hall doesn't
translate to the recording. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So I gave a real good example and involves Burnside.
So I was here in New York the week he died.
I was here for a two weeks stay. He died
on a Sunday. I was off doing something. I came
back to the hotel two in the morning. It was
a stack of messages. I didn't know what it was about.
And finally somebody says, oh, you didn't hear. So with
the Philharmonic, we had to change all the programming. We
(20:31):
did all this stuff, put together all Bernstein program and
a Mona Stones, I got a chorus together, got soloists together.
I don't know how they did it. The concert concluded
with the Chichester Psalms. Beautiful piece those ah, yeah, it's
a wonderful, beautiful piece. And I remember when we finished
there was no applause, but people were crying. You could
(20:52):
hear it. And I thought, you know, I never want
to hear a broadcast or perform. I've got it at home,
but I've never listened to it because I just know
that the feeling of the performance is going to be
maybe not so good. But at that moment, something happened
of course it did. And these are the moments that
you sort of live for as an artist, as actor
(21:14):
or whatever, just those things that are so special. When
I was in London with the BBC and we had
nine to eleven three days before and I had to
do the last night of the Problems, big big deal
I cast worldwide, and we had to change the program.
It was a traditional last night where people come dressed
in silly costumes, they have air horns. It's very light
well and jinguoistic too. It's very rule Britannia and stuff
(21:37):
that just wasn't appropriate. Three days later and I put
on the one piece that we always play in this
country for that kind of occasion, the barber Adagio for strings.
I told the audience that this is our piece in
a time of morning, it's what we play. It's not
intended originally for that. It was just a movement of
a string quartet, but somehow the music has always transcended.
(22:00):
That was played at Roosevelt's funeral and we do it
all the time. The interesting thing was that performance is
at least two minutes longer than any performance I ever gave.
But it was the most moving and it wasn't about
how long it took.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Something happened.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I came off stage. I collapsed in the dressing room.
I was I didn't know if I could go out
and finish the concert. I was so overwhelmed. Just it happens. Now.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
What I want to ask you, is am I wrong?
I mean, I'm assuming you have some tracking of this
because you've been teaching off and on for years. They
seem to have let go of all this kind of
music instructing in the public schools.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yell, no kidding. When I was in public school in La,
my high school public high school in the early sixties,
three choruses, two bands, and orchestra. It was called La
High the Romans. I played Glockenspiel in the band, and
my job was at the football games to march down
the forty five make a left for five yards. I
(22:59):
was the tip of the l in La. It was
really nice. This is how important the arts were back then.
When you played in the band, you didn't have to
go to Pe to fyzed, and they didn't realize that
when football season is over, we became a concert band.
We weren't doing any marching anymore, and we still didn't
have to go to pe, which I didn't have to
climb those ropes do any of that stuff. Dodgeball very
(23:20):
happy to do that anyway. But that's how education was.
Everybody had these things. Even when I was in the
fourth grade. You had mister Stole, I had Missus Auto.
Missus Auto would come twice a week with her auto harp.
You remember the auto harp. You press a something down,
I play a chord, you sang. She would bring instruments in.
(23:40):
Whenever I go back to la if I do a concert,
often somebody will come back and say, you know, I
was in Wilshrecrest Elementary with you. Do you remember Missus Auto?
And I said, she had that kind of impression. Say
this is gone. Now we don't have this anymore, and
it's tragic. I remember testifying to Congress a couple times
for money for NEA, for various arts things. We had
(24:05):
real proponents, We had people who cared about it in
the Senate and in the House.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
What upsets me is that my situation was a late
and learning thing. You dropped those seeds in the ground
and they might grow years later, and you don't really
know they need to be exposed to the.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
People think, okay, we're going to teach music with the
idea that the kids are all going to become musicians.
Of course not. It's part of something that nurtures the soul.
You need this and these days. To me, when you
talk about music, you're talking about it the same way
you're talking about physical paintings, art, sculpture, anything like that.
(24:42):
It's part of our lives. It's all there. If you're
driving down the street you see a billboard, nobody thinks
about probably somewhere as a youngster. The person who created
that billboard had something as a kid that inspired them
to become an artist. That may have gone that direction,
but that's perfectly fine. I was very lucky because having
this background of the studios and chairman of music at home,
(25:02):
and the third part the popular music industry that my
parents were involved in. We were really close with Frank Sinatra.
He was very close family friend, but not King Cole
George Sharing. All those people came to your house. They
came to the house, they played on the piano. But
I still have and I was a jazz guy back then.
I was more interested in jazz, so I'd go down
to Kowega There was a club called Shelley's manhole a
(25:22):
great drummer, Shelley Man who had the best line ever.
He was asked, tell us what jazz is and he said, yeah,
we only play things the same way once. Nobody knows
what it means, but it's great anyway. So I had
hang out at the clubs, and I grew up with
this idea that it wasn't just one kind of music.
There's like Duke Ellington said, there's only two kinds of music,
(25:43):
good music and the rest, and we get to determine.
We get to determine what the rest is. So I
think if I was gonna be involved in moving music
education these days, I would find people who understand that
it's not limited to this period of music, that is
not ephemeral, that it can be other things. How do
(26:04):
they all relate? Everything grows from that classical era. We
only had this music for three centuries, so let's just
say and from that, that's where the popular music evolved.
You can trace any form of popular music back to Baroque,
back to classic whatever it all moves from that.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Conductor Leonard Slatkin, If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep
it to yourself. Tell a friend, and be sure to
follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. When we come back, Leonard Slatkin
shares how a former president of the United States helped
sway him to accept the job offer in our nation's capital.
(26:57):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. In
addition to conducting most of the leading orchestras of the world,
Leonard Slatkin is also a composer, type of the antique
rome rich reliquary of lofty contemplation left at time by
(27:22):
buried centuries of pomp and power. I was honored to
perform the narration for one of Edgar Allen Poe's the
famous Poems, set to Slackkin's own composition. Here he is
conducting the Manhattan School of Music Symphony performing the Raven
four the Colisseum. I wanted to know about Leonard Slatkin's
(28:07):
very first opportunity leading an orchestra.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I was a student at the Julliard School, which back
then is where the Manhattan School is now. So it
was one hundred and twenty second and Claremont.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
The old Juilliard the original Were you hired to play
was a conducting student student.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
There were only four of us, and that was nice,
and word kind of got out that there was this
kid who was sort of okay. And I was hired
by a man named David Epstein, who was the music
director in New York Symphony, to be his assistant. So
I mostly went to rehearsals and he let me conduct
one piece on a program one time, and he left
(28:48):
and they asked me if I were to become the
music director of the youth Orchestra. So I gave concerts
at Lincoln Center and at Carnegie but it was all
why I was still a student here in New York.
But the interesting story is how did I get to
Saint Louis UIs From there? The music director in Saint Louis,
Walter Siskin, was also the music director at the Aspen
Music Festival. In school back in the sixties. It was
(29:12):
a small It's not like Aspen today where there's six
seven hundred students and faculty. Back then it was one
hundred and twenty five students. We stayed there nine weeks.
Siskin really was very encouraging to me, and he's in
the third year of the four that I was there.
He invited the executive director of the Saint Louis Symphony,
where he was going to start in sixty eight, to
(29:34):
come and see me. They liked what they saw, and
they asked me to come and be the assistant conductor there.
This route is a little different. It doesn't happen that
way anymore. There are very few real assistant conductors. My
job was to sit there, listen to every rehearsal, and
be prepared if something happened. Today. The assistants, maybe they're
(29:56):
there with the music director. Maybe they just cover one
week of concerts. But this indoctrination, having to know so
much music every year, imagine look at any brochure. Now
add to that the children's concerts, the pops concerts, all
those things. In my first year in Saint Louis Is assistant,
I did eighty three children's concerts, eighty three of them,
(30:17):
and I remember this feel like that. The first one
was on a tour at Kennett, Missouri. So I did
this concert and had the Sources Apprentice on the program.
The traditional piece you all play for young people, it's Infantasia.
And the famous part about Sources Apprentice is that there's
a solo for this unwieldy instrument called the contrabassoon. It's
(30:38):
just a gigantic instrument that sounds like gas being passed
sometimes and the music goes yea ba yah bah and
then the bason goes bah like that. Well the bassoon
is came in wrong. And it was his first concerts,
just like it was my first concert. So yeah, and
he comes in and before I give the next time
(30:58):
and he goes shit, shit, and you know, there's like
two thousand kids. It's things good, My god. It was
a wonderful first concert. Memorable.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So is it safe to say you can fill this
in for us the New York youths of it? Is
that your first conducting gig.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
First gig, yep, absolutely, I did some conducting before. Then.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
What was the big takeaway for you?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
From the takeaway was that I felt comfortable both as
an educator and as a conductor. Now, what I mean
by that is when you have young people who've never
played any of this music they're about to play, you
have to teach the music. If you go to a
New York filt mona, I could say Lois, Minnesota, whatever
it is. If you're playing standard rep like your Chaikowsky six,
(31:44):
even Maller nine. These days, the orchestrati knows the music
you're going to give mostly interpretive matters, wild sow, short, long.
But when it's kids, you have to be able to say,
I'm going to try to teach you the music, but
I'm also going to teach you the details of the piece,
the structure of the piece. So I learned that. I
(32:05):
learned how to communicate to these young people in the
most basic possible way, but without talking down to them.
Because I came from a family of musicians, I would
never do that. It was later that I would learn
the balance. When you stand in front of a professional orchestra,
what do you say? Don't repeat things that they already know.
Be very careful about the words you choose to tell
(32:27):
them something. It's very different. So the youth orchestra was good,
and I was a product of youth orchestras. In La
I played viola in one and that's where I started conducting.
When the conductor was called away at a rehearsal, he said,
it's lucky and you would like to conduct, And I said,
well sure, and he threw down the score of the
marriage figure overture, and I got up and conducted. Apparently
(32:49):
it was good enough that you let me do it
at the concert. Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Now, someone at your level and with your experience in
this industry and this art form, when you move from
one place to another, when you eventually want up a
good example, I guess it is like, well, obviously, the
three big ones you correct me if I'm wrong in
terms of a real music director's position are Saint Louis
and DC and.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Detroit in the States. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Right, And then what position did you hold as a
music director overseas?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
I was the principal conductor of the BBC Symphony in
London for six years. I loved that. Oh so much fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Now, let's look at Saint Louis on the DC on
the Detroit. So you've obviously, or correct me if I'm wrong.
You've played with them and conducted them before you take
on the position.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yes, you test drive well. But in Saint Louis had
already been the assistant and assistant to the principal and
principal guests for ten years, so I'd worked with they
knew me. Washington, I hadn't been there very often. You
had played with them, I played with them quite a
while before, but they needed to arrange a concert to
see if that would work. I knew that Andre Preven
(33:52):
had already been asked and turned the job down. This
is to succeed Missislav Rostropovitch, who was bigger than life,
a tough job to do. So they arranged the concert
in the summer for me to come in and just
see if it was going to work. At intermission of
the concert, the then head of the Kennedy Center, who
was named James Wolfinson go on to head the World Bank, says, Oh,
(34:13):
there's somebody here who'd like to meet you, if you
don't mind, if we're not bothering you an intermission and
he brings in the Clintons and I can't do his voice,
but he asks I, certainly, I hope you'd be able
to come here and be all music director.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
So the president am I going to Leonard, I'd really
love it if you come and.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Play with us. Something like that. So I did that
for twelve years. Two set of terms.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
When you go to a place and you're there, like DC,
is it a tough decision? Like did you say to yourself?
I got to be in love with this thing. I
gotta be in love. You're gonna sign a contract for
multiple years.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Excellent question. I knew it was time to leave. Saint
Louis been there for ten is the secondary conductor, in
seventeen is music director, so twenty seven that's a long
time there in one place. And I knew I couldn't
do any more there to make them grow. They needed
to go another way. I didn't know what I wanted
to do next, and then this Washington thing came up,
and I thought, I've really tried to do something which
(35:13):
is really tough, and that's to be an American conductor,
raised in America, trained in America, leading an American orchestra.
There weren't very many of us doing that. Bernstein obviously
set the example, but after that, not so many. And
I thought the challenge of really bringing an American agenda
not for any patriotic or nationalistic reason. It's just the
(35:35):
love of the culture here and bringing the Kennedy Center
into that, and it's what James Wolfin's also wanted. And
after a few years, even though I would say the
relationship with the orchestra was okay, it wasn't like Saint Louis.
I never felt as connected to them, even it was
twelve years long. I loved the time there because I
got to meet people who changed the way the world
(35:56):
would be the next day, wouldn't like that, and the
stimulation of the conversations, all these things. It made it
really exciting for me. But ultimately I think the board said,
you know, we want a little more traditional base for
our orchestra. So twelve years left. Now I was pretty
sure I didn't want to take another orchestra, and I
(36:19):
was asked to guest conduct the Detroit, where I hadn't
been like twenty five years, and I didn't realize there
was a vacancy there. I didn't think about it, so
I was there. His name was Neme Yarve. I know
it was there a long time that Pacho's Paula's father,
and I fell in love with the hall. To me
an orchestra hall, it's the same as the strata Varius
(36:42):
is to the violinist, if you can get a good haul,
and there aren't that many good hauls, not really where
the sound is both intimate and open and warm. At
the same time, I thought I could do something with
this orchestra in that specific hall, and that's why I
took that job. It also became a little bit problematic
because my first year I only had time to do
(37:03):
five weeks because I was still guest conducting. The second
year I had a heart attack versut of two and
that put me out for three months. And then the
third year, well there wasn't a third year because the
orchestra went on strike for six months. So my job
became rebuilding, which is not exactly what I wanted to do.
And even though we did a lot of good things together,
(37:25):
I realized that this isn't what I wanted to do.
So after ten years, I said that's it and I'm
done and I will not take another music directorship anywhere.
I don't want it. I don't want to be an
administrator anymore. And it's changed. The profession is so different now.
It's dictated by marketing. It's dictated a lot by economics.
Of course understandable.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
It's an expensive industry.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
It's a very expensive industry and getting more expensive. And
is there a demand for it?
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Not?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Really, it's all different now. I couldn't do what I
did in Saint Louis today. I just couldn't do it. It
wouldn't be allowed. Nobody would like that kind of not authoritarian.
I'm not like that. But I had my ideas and
I needed a partnership, which I had in Saint Louis
with the executive director and artistic administrator. We would set goals,
here's what we want to do in five years, this
(38:13):
is where we want to be. And the minute we
achieved one of the little goals within that framework, we
would just add another goal and we did it. You
can't do it that way anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You know, every great city has its belt, it has
its perimeter of wealth. Every guy's eighty and every woman's
seventy five, and they all own the paper mill, and
they own the railroad, and they were all rich people
who are funding this propt this thing.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
There are the big difference. What is between those days
and now? It's really easy to define. Back sixty seventies,
even into the eighties, the people who were the civic
leaders and who had vested financial interest in the arts
loved the arts. They knew the arts. Not only did
they support it financially, they were patrons. They came, they
(38:58):
loved it. The chairman of the board in Saint Louis
was an amateur violinist. He went on the stage and
played the Bach double with Isaac Stern. You go ahead
and find any other person like that now, and I'll
give you another example. I say, Louis is easy. I
live there now. We had in the last twenty five
years a man and his wife who are incredible philanthropists
(39:20):
and patrons of the arts. They supported the symphony, the opera,
all these things. The manforded a company. He had a
company called Sentine. It was a health management among the
fortune twenty five and they gave money to the arts
like crazy. He dies. His name is Michael Nidorff. Two
weeks later, the new administration in the company ceased all
(39:42):
funding for the arts in the city. And that is
the problem with corporate America and it's lack of interest
in the arts. I don't know what we could do
about it. I've often thought maybe this is where podcasting, radio,
other things have a chance, maybe to get things back
to a basic level. There should be education for people
(40:03):
who are middle aged to say, here's classic one oh one,
let's learn about this music. Have people who can host shows,
describe it, do it video, do whatever you want. We
need to get back to an education method for people
who didn't have it when they were in school and
can't bring that to the table with their corporations.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Well, the question I have though, is that when you
go from Saint Louis to Washington, then on Detroit. I
would imagine in some cities, regardless of they're ups and
downs economically, there's still plenty of wealth and money there.
What was Detroit Like Detroit is a city in a
desperate city at time, What was happening when you got it.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
In two thousand and nine? When I got there, it
had already been suffering from the big decline that we
had economically, which is of course why this strike would happen,
and everybody saw it coming. People lost up to seventy
five percent of their portfolios. It was amazing, actually, And
it's easy for people to say, Okay, we got enough
(41:00):
people who are wealthy to support all this, but it's,
like you put it out, it's old money. And the
thing is, the new money wasn't there yet. These days,
they've done a pretty good job of reaching into the
community to be again, it's just a handful of people
can't do it has to be more across the board.
You've got to reach these people. The way to do
it is through education. You put education initiatives out there.
(41:21):
It's the one area in Detroit they have no trouble
raising money if it's targeted towards education.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Well, one thing I think is interesting because I've seen
this in New York now a couple of cycles where
they went from I don't think.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Mozelle was there.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
It was Allan of course, and then Yap and now
is this the hunt for a music director and the
weight they put on that and the importance they put
on that, and like in New York, you feel, I'm
not criticizing the mom on the board, but you can
see there's a little wisp of they all want the
next Lenny.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
They want a superstar. There's never going to be a
next Lenny, right. We all know that I was always
the other Lenny. I was called that for years. Oh oh,
it's perfect either he was the son of Felix, the
son of Eleanor and the other Lenny. That was my
mantra for a while. This is going to sound radical,
(42:08):
and it's something I've been thinking about. Within the changes
of the so called classical music industry. I'm not sure
that we really need a music director, as the role
has usually been defined in the past, a music director
would spend at least half the season with the orchestra.
When you're looking at your Ormidies, your Zell's, your sholdies whatever.
(42:30):
The reason those orchestras sounded like that was because they
were there all the time, and they covered within their
strengths the basic repertoire so Ormedes, Slavic and whatever Zeala
is the classic repertoire shulties, the big romantic, large gestures,
and they got known for that. They were associated with
that repertoire. I wonder if we shouldn't do more something
(42:52):
like what the Europeans do. They have a principal conductor,
somebody who still does more concerts than anybody else. They
define find their roles that way. They tour with the orchestra.
But one person now cannot put a whole season together
with all the guests, all the repertoire. Even if you're
as incredibly talented as Gustavo is. He can't do this
(43:13):
alone anywhere. I could in the old days, because I
would spend twenty weeks in Saint Louis. There's more than
half the season, and I knew all this stuff. I
think having a principal conductor focusing on the repertoire, they
do well. I think another prediction, I mean that was
one prediction in a way. The second one is I
think orchestras themselves are beginning. We're seeing it ready to
take more control about the membership of the people who
(43:35):
constitute the orchestra. You know about the blind audition, Yes,
so the idea here was screens would go up. You
would never be able to see the person playing at
an audition to get an orchestra job, so therefore there
would be no discrimination. But you also didn't know where
they studied, where have they played before, what kind of
experience do they have to me? I understood it when
(43:58):
it went up, and it did help to create more
women in the orchestral workforce, but certainly did nothing for
diverse populations. Couldn't you couldn't see them, you couldn't know
anything about them. I think the day of the screen
needs to end, at least in the final round of auditions,
so it can be open about it. But I also
think that decision now, because the report was so vast,
(44:20):
now should lay in the hands of the orchestra itself.
Let them decide what they want their orchestra to be.
Most music directors today don't have this kind of gravitas
of the older conductors. They don't come from the same
kind of generation, they don't come from the same kind
of training. Let them do what they do well, bring
in some guests to do it. Let the orchestra choose
(44:41):
its own membership. So if you have that, then you're
in a whole different world. You have you're not out
searching like crazy like these orchestras are. It's going to
take two three years to find somebody. The orchestra goes leaderless,
So who's choosing the members of the orchestra? The orchestra itself? Anyway?
Why not just keep that?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Think that One of the things I'm concerned about lately,
of course, isn't in the sexual assault scandal at the Philharmonic.
And I think Gary Ginstling, our executive director, he's beautifully beautiful,
because this thingn't gets dumped on very well. Somebody does
something to somebody and you really you have no idea,
and then it gets dumped on you to solve this problem.
It's really really tough, and you know, as you said,
they're going to pick their own members. That's a very
(45:21):
tough thing for the organization to process now about what
our responsibilities and what our obligations are in terms of
managing like and of course people that commit those crimes,
if you will, and the exhibit that behavior, you want
the matter there as soon as possible and getting rid
of them as impossible, get possible.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Somebody fired in an orchestra is a minimum two year process,
and it usually doesn't succeed. So, yes, there are only
three ways you can usually get somebody out. One is
for harassment, like we're talking about here. Two is for ineviation,
hard to prove because you're gonna get drug testing after
a concert. And the third is when you insult somebody disparagement.
(45:58):
Yes there was in New Jersey they used to have
a clause. Maybe they still do. The conductor's not allowed
to scowl at the orchestra because they had a music
director who scowled. I can see that court case trying
to define scowl.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Another thing I would assume is grounds for dismissal is
in subordinate, and that's the way I was looking for it.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I'm sorry, that's how.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
We got there. You go, how many times have you tried.
I'm assuming almost never have you tried to get somebody
to play something the way you want and they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Hey, it's happened. And I can tell you. When I
made my debut with the Neark Philharmonic, they used to
have this thing where they would test the young conductors
who come in and I was doing for coffee of
five and at one point I stopped and the first
clarinet Stanley Drucker, said, excuse me. You know in this place,
I'm playing this on an A clarinet instead of a
(46:44):
B flat clarinet, but I know your scores in't ce
what note do I have? And that just looks at
I said, well, you have a concert, be natural? Why
are you playing on an a clarinet? So I shot
it back to him. I know that's a little difficult.
But the hard one was what the viola's There's a
place in the last one that goes YadA YadA da,
And I looked at the viola's the verse it's not
together and the first viella says, yes it is. I said, no,
(47:07):
it's not. He says, don't worry, it'll be fine at
the concert. And I said, do you think we could
get this be fine now. So all you can do
is try to find a way. Probably today that would
be in subordination. You can't do a lot of things.
If you're teaching conductors, you have to ask permission to
change the hand position. You can't just go I can't
imagine my piano teacher having to go with what piano
(47:30):
teachers do today. You have to have the door open.
People have to see it. There are teachers who now
record the lessons to make sure there's nothing like that happening.
But that was how discipline was, and that's how we
had all these great artists. So I don't know if
that will ever change. And yes, we need to be,
of course, very careful. We have to choose our words carefully,
we have to choose what we do. But maybe it's
(47:51):
gone a little too far.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
You just released a book, eight Symphonic master Works of
the twentieth Century.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
What's that book about. This is the fourth book I've
had published. The first two were kind of memoir autobiography,
stories that the third one was about the industry some
of the things we've been talking about, and this one
is more dedicated for musicians, particularly conductors, but not exclusively.
I took eight pieces of music, very familiar works write
(48:19):
a Spring, La, Maia, Young Person's Got It, the Orchestra,
Barbara Daggio, Sover and so on, and I literally analyze
them bar by bar saying this is what the conductor
needs to know before you ever step foot on the podium.
This is my way of saying to you technically, how
you do it, emotionally, how you get into it. And
(48:40):
in many cases, when there are three, four or five
different ways to do a passage, I'll say, these are
the things you can do here. There really hasn't been
a book quite like this before, and I believe it
will be the start of a series. I know the
second volume will come out in October, and I'm hoping
that every eight or nine months will have It's been
fabulous for me. It's imagine if somebody said, Okay, here's
(49:02):
something you did when you started in your career, a play.
Whatever it is. Now, we want you to go back
and look at it again. But with all this experience
you have for what you bring to it, you learn I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Coach writing a play now with a friend of mine,
my own former acting teacher. I'm just assistant, but.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Aren't you learning?
Speaker 1 (49:18):
So I'm going back to it. That's what I said
to myself. I said, this is my opportunity to understand.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I understand the exactly, and that's this book is like
therapy for me in my work.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
I've joked with people before when I was watching popular
music with some friends of mine at an event of
some type, and then of course always in the symphony.
I turned to my friend at one concert and I'd
said this before, and I said to this friend of mine,
for the first time I shared with him. I said,
look at these people. Do you see what they're doing?
And he leaned into me. I whispered, and he said
what And I said, they're all doing the same thing
(49:50):
at the same time, led by this man to me,
I just crave that. I crave watching those ensembles and
watching them do this thing together.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
It's like when we renovated the Kennedy Center. I asked
President Clinton to come and conduct the Stars and Stripes
at the end, and he didn't have a chance to rehearse.
He had me go to the White House to give
him a lesson, but he already knew. He was saying,
what do I do about that place where the brass
slowed out. Well actually know what to do, so he comes.
I introduce him, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really sick of
doing stars and stripes with his orchestra, so I'm going
(50:22):
to turn over to our new assistant conductor, the President
of the United States. He does it. It goes just fine,
and in his book he wrote how this was really
the best thing during his presidency because he got one
hundred people to do what he wanted.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
My thanks to Leonard Slatkin, I'm now like Baldwin. Here's
the thing has brought to you by iHeartRadio. I'll leave
you with Prairie Knight from Aaron Copeland's Billy the Kid
Ballet Suite. Leonard Slatkin conducts the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Speaker 5 (51:03):
Yea no camag
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio for my guest today. Music runs deep.
His parents played together in the Hollywood String Quartet and
(00:26):
helped create some of the great film scores of early Hollywood.
He grew up with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra,
and Nat King Cole swinging by the house playing music
with his family and friends. He would go on to
become the internationally renowned conductor and composer that we know
him as today, Leonard Slatkin. This is Slatkin conducting the
(01:00):
Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra performing Leonard Bernstein's Candide Overture. He has,
(01:21):
at one time or another conducted virtually all of the
leading orchestras in the world. As music director, he led
the New Orleans, Saint Louis, Detroit, and National Symphony Orchestras.
He has served as principal guest conductor in Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cleveland,
and Los Angeles. A six time Grammy winner, Leonard Slatkin
(01:43):
also hosted a weekly radio show and has written several books.
I wanted to begin by learning more about his pedigree
Slatkin's mother, Eleanor Aller, was a first chair cellist at
Warner Brothers Studios, and his father, Felix Slatkin, was a
via eldinist, conductor and concertmaster at twentieth Century Fox.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Concertmaster is, after the conductor, the most important person to
an orchestra. Yes, they get the a from the ebo
and the orchestra tunes, but they're responsible for setting up
all the boeings, those up and downs, for the kind
of things that are played off the string. When the
conductor has a comment, it goes to the concert master,
(02:27):
who then passes the information on to the rest of
the orchestra. The concert master is usually selected by the conductor.
It's changed because the business has changed. Now the orchestras
themselves try to pick the person they think will be leader.
So remember a conductor, as a music director is only
there maybe twelve fourteen weeks of the year, but the
(02:47):
concertmaster is there all years. That person becomes the real
confidant to the music director and the conductor. They're the
ones responsible for the overall sound of the orchestra. When
the music director is not.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
There, call any of the films that he performed the
scores to.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
The ones that people might have seen or heard. But
you're going back now to the late thirties right through
the fifties. So my father was the violin soloist in
a film called How Green was My Valley? Course, great film,
and in a funny way, the one that was the
most intriguing was the old nineteen fifty three, The Day
the Earth Stood Still, And the reason for that was
(03:25):
it was the first use ever of an electric violin.
The score was done by the legendary Bernard Herman, who
did all those scores for Hitchcock. But the electric violin
was new, hadn't existed yet. And as my father told it,
and there's a photograph of it when you go into
the Fox offices, my father is standing there playing what
looks like a piece of wood with strings on it.
(03:47):
It does not look like a violin. And in order
to get the right sound and balance, the loud speaker
was in another studio, so my father really couldn't hear
himself while he was playing this with a bow, with
a bow with a bow. Marvelous score and all that's
like d it's all the electric violin and something called
the Ferryman, which exactly very good. They are that way,
(04:12):
and this was like the first really important electronics score
for any films. So those two films, but there's another
one that I think is even more interesting because you
can see my father. You remember How to Marry a Millionaire?
Of course nineteen fifty one or three, you forget if
you watch that before the film starts. They tried to
replicate what happened at a Hollywood premiere. In those days,
(04:35):
the studios owned the movie theaters in La so there
ere eleven studios. There was a Fox Theater, there was
a Warners Theater, there was a Paramount Theater, et cetera.
The red carpet was there, the search lights were on
when you went into the theater for premieres those days.
The orchestra from the studio was playing Wow. The new
concept I think it was CinemaScope that was introduced with
(04:57):
this film. Instead of having the orchestra there, they filmed
the orchestra. So the conductor, Alfred Newman, who is that
of Fox, comes out, takes about, turns around, and he
leads the orchestra in the overture Newman Street scene, and
you see my dad, and you see the entire twentieth
century Fox Orchestra playing and It's Just Marvelous on film
as an overture to the film itself.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Now, you were born in Los Angeles? Was and your
dad had he been born there as well?
Speaker 2 (05:25):
No, my dad was from Saint Louis. He was born
in nineteen fifteen. He was a child prodigy. He played
a recital full recital when he was twelve years old.
He was heard by the leading pedagogue for violin in
the country, man named e From Zimbalis, the father of.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Junior Stephanie Zimbolis is a friend of mine. Well I
knew their father was a talented He was.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
An incredible violin teacher. All the great Roland studied with
him at the Curtis School. My father, at the age
of twelve went to Philadelphia, youngest student ever to be
taken to the school, stayed there for three years. Then
announce has got in the way. He came back to
Saint Louis, played for three years in the orchestra there
and then moved the family out to La Why because
(06:09):
he went to the music director of the Saint Louis
Symphony was a man named Vladimir Goldshman asked for a
five dollars raise and didn't get it, and he said,
that's it. I'm done. Went out to La. There he
was heard by several people, including Alfred Newman, who at
that time was at Warners. Newman invited to play in
the Orchard. The composer absolutely, and the Newman family, of course,
(06:33):
is astonishing. When you go from Alfred to Randy to
Tommy to David, all the Newman's are in music. And
there's something very cool coming up for me in June
because I'm going to go out to LA to do
a project. You know the name Robert.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Peake, I know, but you're doing Live to picture, yes.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And no, Okay. The first half of the concert is
a representation of this guy who made the posters for
iconic films Superman, Apocalypse, now Silverado. All those posters we
all know this guy drew them. So the first half
we're going to play the music that goes with that film.
But he also did original art one for the World's
Fair here, other things like that. So we have ten
(07:17):
current film composers including Marco Beltrami, Jeff Beio, so many others,
and they've created original pieces with these new pictures. The
cool part is that before we do the show at
Disney Hall we record this where do we record it
on the Fox sound stage where my dad played? And
(07:38):
another composer who's involved in this is Maria Newman, the
youngest daughter of Alfred. So this unbelievable connection is going
to come to fruition. And my son Daniel, who's a
composer for film and television, who will be with me.
Three representations of Slack on site. And the twentieth sound
stage is the same as it was back then. It's
(07:58):
the one sound stage they changed. All the equipment is new,
but everybody thought this is the ideal set. Named after anybody,
it's Alfred Newman, sounds Dame.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
They all named after something. Now you pick up an
instrument for the first time. I've read at the age
of three, and what I want to answer, I want
to ask two questions about your memory, which is that
I could can't remember a single thing from my life
when I was three. Maybe four or five kicked in,
but three would be a stretch from me. And I'm wondering,
do you recall in any way what it was like
(08:29):
for them to hand this thing to you and you
to explore that.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
I remember that I wanted to do it. Why because
I wanted to be like my father. Of course, I
remember the first few lessons on the violin, and I
played on I think when I was four at Sears
Roebuck downtown. The teacher that I had a little recital
(08:53):
for all of his students, and I sort of remember
that because in those days I was frightened of elevators
and we had to go up to like the fifth
floor or something, and they didn't want to go in
the elevator. I don't know why I can manage all
you've overcome. I do know that my father tried to
teach me a little bit, and that didn't work. It
never does. Parents should not teach their kids an instrument.
(09:15):
My mother tried it with my brother. Dad didn't work,
so for and so on. So anyway, I did that
for maybe four or five years, playing violin, and I
realized I just was not going to be as good
as my father. I knew it early on, started at
three and wanted to stop. Win.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
How OLDE seven? So how does a seven year old say?
Speaker 2 (09:34):
I quit?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
I remember you like I quit the but this now,
how do you do? You walked right up to him
and said I can't do this anyay.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Well, it wasn't really a problem because my parents saw
that I was much more interested in going out and
playing baseball with my friends. I just didn't have the
desire for it. And yet right after I stopped playing violin,
I knew I wanted to take up piano, and piano
I studied with my uncle better idea than my father.
(10:02):
My uncle was also connected with the studios. He was
one of the staff pianists at Warners and if you
can imagine, my mother was the first cellist at Warners.
We'll get into that in a second. You have to
imagine la if you don't know those who are listening here.
We lived in the Wilshire Librea district, and that was
(10:23):
about three miles from the twentieth century Fox studio where
my dad was, and three miles as you went into
the valley where Warners was, so the house was equidistant.
We could get to that. My uncle, you know him.
If you've seen more or less the Warners films from
the late thirties through the mid sixties, particularly, there was
(10:44):
a wonderful old horror film called The Beasts with Five Fingers.
Robert Alda and Peter Lourie going either was the hand,
I tell.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
You it was the hand.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
There's a great film. It's my uncle's hand in the film,
really fantastic. He told us wonderful stories about how they
did it back then, how they made it look like
it really was a dismembered hand playing the piano. My
uncle had to be under the piano, under it and
reach his left hand up to play in that direction.
It was by George. He did it, I judge you did.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So he was there and I studied with him, and
I was headed off to somebody else. I kind of
kept at the piano. But at one point, maybe when
I was fifteen or sixteen, I just knew that I
wasn't good enough. Not so much competition with my uncle,
but I heard too many great pianists. I just knew
(11:37):
I wasn't gonna be good for that. So I stopped
and I picked up the viola. Nobody else in the
family played it. The viola is kind of like the
violin with a thyroid condition. It's a little bit larger,
diabetic diabetic violin. I love the viola because the viola
in an orchestra sort of usually sits in the middle
of everything. It's playing lines that often the audience doesn't hear.
(12:00):
And I loved being part of this texture, playing the
stuff that was interesting for the harmony, sometimes the melodies.
So I enjoyed the viola. And then I moved into
composition after that. And here I had the opportunity to
study with an incredible teacher, the same guy who taught
all of the great film composers, whether it was John Williams,
(12:20):
Jerry Goldsmith, Olmer Bernstein. This man was named Mario Castnuovo Tedesco,
and like so many people who came to LA, he
was escaping the war and came and settled in LA
and became a composer for films using various surnames. He
didn't use his own name for these a lot of
B films. But he was a fantastic teacher. Really was good,
(12:41):
and I thought I was going to be a composed.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
He was based aware eventually that people would find him well. Well,
he had a house in Beverly Hills, but he was
not in a studio. No, no, they were. By the
time I was studying with him, the studio system had collapsed.
This was due to the McCarthy hearings in fifty six
when all eleven studios were under heavy fire because nobody
(13:04):
else could get jobs at those studios, although they employed
five hundred musicians between them, and the eventual decision came
down that no, we need to just make it all
open for everybody. Now two hundred musicians worked playing at
all the studios.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It was horrible. It was terrible. I ever thought about it.
I remember the anti trust. Yeah, we had at our house.
There was an opposition group called the Musicians Guild which
opposed the union in this particular matter, and they would
have meetings at our house. My brother and I were
told if anybody ever asks you, just say. People came
over to play cards. The union was headed by a
(13:38):
guy named James Petrollo, name you might know.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
And he was like a union head o Patrollo.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Oh yeah, this man came to negotiation sessions and would
pull a gun out of his pocket and put it
on the desk, say okay, where do we start. That's
how tough it was.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Conductor Leonard Slatkin. If you enjoy conversations about the elemental
skills of inducting, check out my episode with Raphael Pire.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
When I go into an orchestra, especially for the first time.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
It's all about.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Let's see how the sound of the orchestra reacts to
my beat, and let's see what we can do together.
Every orchestra has a specificity and there's something that is
different and with everybody, and yet it will see how
with the chemistry that would happen on the stage, how
much it could be ben It's like a dancer party.
You know how fast you can do and how you
(14:28):
can go from one place to the other, makea twirl.
But it's just all about that kind of trust.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Happening to hear more of my conversation with Raphael Pire,
go to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break,
Leonard Slatkin shares what it was like growing up around
Frank Sinatra. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
(15:10):
the Thing. This is Leonard Slatkin conducting the Saint Louis
(15:36):
Symphony Orchestra performing Leroy Anderson's The Typewriter. Leonard Slatkin's musical
family were performing at the height.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Of old Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I wanted to know if his parents group, the Hollywood
String Quartet, were named for their work on film scores.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It started just after they were playing in the studios,
and that's the reason they had their name. The other
two musicians in the quartet also came from the studios.
They were advised not to use that as a name
because back then Hollywood was simply movies. That was it,
and they felt you can't be taken seriously if you
used that name. But they said, we would not have
(16:15):
a way to earn a living and be a quartet
if it wasn't for the city proud of it, so
they stuck with that. They existed from about nineteen thirty nine,
I think had to stop because of the war, and
then they reassembled in the late forties and went through
to about nineteen fifty nine. Their career was primarily on records.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Before the Hollywood Drikure. They didn't meet at the Hollywood drinkquet.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
They were already a couple when they sort of played well.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
My parents met actually in a very strange way. There
was a competition at the Hollywood Bowl for young musicians
and my father won, and my mother was convinced this
was a fixed competition. So her father, who was also
a cellist teaching my mom said maybe we should go
to the concert and here so they went and my
mother said, yeah, okay, he plays well. I still think
(17:04):
this was fixed for him. They went backstage. My mother
was like really aggressive, strong person, and she just confronted
my father, and my father asked her out for coffee,
and two years later they got married. That's funny. That's funny.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Well, what I love about the story when you discuss
your family, I can tell how integral it is to
you and how proud you are of them. What it
leads me to think is and then eventually you became
a conductor, the job where you tell all those people
what to do. Here is my chance to go back
in an edible way and pick a guy who reminds
me of my father and tell him a little quieter please.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yes, Well, I like to equate the conductor's role to
more or less the coach or manager of a sports team.
You have your musicians, let's just say one hundred for
sake of saying it, somebody has to say how it's
going to go right? You can say quiet. But in music,
of course, there are degrees of quiet. We have ultra
(18:00):
of pianisimo, or we raise it up a little bit
to piano then we go to metzo piano, then metso forte,
then forte fortisimo. The whole range of things comes up.
Our job as a conductor is to look at the
music and say, Okay, what is the composer trying to
tell us? But as opposed to the people who are playing,
we only have our hands and a stick. We don't
(18:21):
make a sound. Most of what we do, to me,
not to everybody, but to me, is to show with
our hands, with our faces, with our bodies, what the
music is trying to convey. Some conductors just like to
talk a lot. Orchestras hate that they do, do not
like it.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
What do they talk about?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Just the things I'm saying to you. My teacher in
New York, Man named Jean Morel, had a wonderful way
of describing it. He said, when you watch a concert
and there's a conductor on it, turn the sound off
and see if you can tell what piece they're conducting
from their gestures. That's right.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Well, I'm not anywhere near you know your level of
knowledge and so forth. But like for me, when I
started collecting, there was a recording where Burns Team plays,
and literally I looked at all my other Tchaikowsky six.
I always have multiple versions in my phone, and I
watched this and I go, I mean, I couldn't believe it,
not with applause.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
I don't think like he does.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
The final movement, it's ten minutes longer than the one
I have before. Ten minutes.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, how is that possible? Well, it's very interesting sometimes
what we do with an audience there is timeless and
we don't think about how long or short it is.
It just works for the people who building, and then
it gets put on a disc and it's horrible. That's
happened to me constantly. I'll finish something and I go,
(19:45):
you know, it's really good. I can't wait to hear
it back, and then somebody gets me a copy of it.
In the old days of pirated versions, I go, well,
that was terrible, wasn't it, But not on that night
in that time. It's kind of like when you do
a play. You'll come out and say that I did this,
so nailed this, and other people are going, oh, it
wasn't that good, but you felt something on stage.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
I love this idea that you in the room and
doing it live in the in the symphony hall doesn't
translate to the recording. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So I gave a real good example and involves Burnside.
So I was here in New York the week he died.
I was here for a two weeks stay. He died
on a Sunday. I was off doing something. I came
back to the hotel two in the morning. It was
a stack of messages. I didn't know what it was about.
And finally somebody says, oh, you didn't hear. So with
the Philharmonic, we had to change all the programming. We
(20:31):
did all this stuff, put together all Bernstein program and
a Mona Stones, I got a chorus together, got soloists together.
I don't know how they did it. The concert concluded
with the Chichester Psalms. Beautiful piece those ah, yeah, it's
a wonderful, beautiful piece. And I remember when we finished
there was no applause, but people were crying. You could
(20:52):
hear it. And I thought, you know, I never want
to hear a broadcast or perform. I've got it at home,
but I've never listened to it because I just know
that the feeling of the performance is going to be
maybe not so good. But at that moment, something happened
of course it did. And these are the moments that
you sort of live for as an artist, as actor
(21:14):
or whatever, just those things that are so special. When
I was in London with the BBC and we had
nine to eleven three days before and I had to
do the last night of the Problems, big big deal
I cast worldwide, and we had to change the program.
It was a traditional last night where people come dressed
in silly costumes, they have air horns. It's very light
well and jinguoistic too. It's very rule Britannia and stuff
(21:37):
that just wasn't appropriate. Three days later and I put
on the one piece that we always play in this
country for that kind of occasion, the barber Adagio for strings.
I told the audience that this is our piece in
a time of morning, it's what we play. It's not
intended originally for that. It was just a movement of
a string quartet, but somehow the music has always transcended.
(22:00):
That was played at Roosevelt's funeral and we do it
all the time. The interesting thing was that performance is
at least two minutes longer than any performance I ever gave.
But it was the most moving and it wasn't about
how long it took.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Something happened.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
I came off stage. I collapsed in the dressing room.
I was I didn't know if I could go out
and finish the concert. I was so overwhelmed. Just it happens. Now.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
What I want to ask you, is am I wrong?
I mean, I'm assuming you have some tracking of this
because you've been teaching off and on for years. They
seem to have let go of all this kind of
music instructing in the public schools.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yell, no kidding. When I was in public school in La,
my high school public high school in the early sixties,
three choruses, two bands, and orchestra. It was called La
High the Romans. I played Glockenspiel in the band, and
my job was at the football games to march down
the forty five make a left for five yards. I
(22:59):
was the tip of the l in La. It was
really nice. This is how important the arts were back then.
When you played in the band, you didn't have to
go to Pe to fyzed, and they didn't realize that
when football season is over, we became a concert band.
We weren't doing any marching anymore, and we still didn't
have to go to pe, which I didn't have to
climb those ropes do any of that stuff. Dodgeball very
(23:20):
happy to do that anyway. But that's how education was.
Everybody had these things. Even when I was in the
fourth grade. You had mister Stole, I had Missus Auto.
Missus Auto would come twice a week with her auto harp.
You remember the auto harp. You press a something down,
I play a chord, you sang. She would bring instruments in.
(23:40):
Whenever I go back to la if I do a concert,
often somebody will come back and say, you know, I
was in Wilshrecrest Elementary with you. Do you remember Missus Auto?
And I said, she had that kind of impression. Say
this is gone. Now we don't have this anymore, and
it's tragic. I remember testifying to Congress a couple times
for money for NEA, for various arts things. We had
(24:05):
real proponents, We had people who cared about it in
the Senate and in the House.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
What upsets me is that my situation was a late
and learning thing. You dropped those seeds in the ground
and they might grow years later, and you don't really
know they need to be exposed to the.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
People think, okay, we're going to teach music with the
idea that the kids are all going to become musicians.
Of course not. It's part of something that nurtures the soul.
You need this and these days. To me, when you
talk about music, you're talking about it the same way
you're talking about physical paintings, art, sculpture, anything like that.
(24:42):
It's part of our lives. It's all there. If you're
driving down the street you see a billboard, nobody thinks
about probably somewhere as a youngster. The person who created
that billboard had something as a kid that inspired them
to become an artist. That may have gone that direction,
but that's perfectly fine. I was very lucky because having
this background of the studios and chairman of music at home,
(25:02):
and the third part the popular music industry that my
parents were involved in. We were really close with Frank Sinatra.
He was very close family friend, but not King Cole
George Sharing. All those people came to your house. They
came to the house, they played on the piano. But
I still have and I was a jazz guy back then.
I was more interested in jazz, so I'd go down
to Kowega There was a club called Shelley's manhole a
(25:22):
great drummer, Shelley Man who had the best line ever.
He was asked, tell us what jazz is and he said, yeah,
we only play things the same way once. Nobody knows
what it means, but it's great anyway. So I had
hang out at the clubs, and I grew up with
this idea that it wasn't just one kind of music.
There's like Duke Ellington said, there's only two kinds of music,
(25:43):
good music and the rest, and we get to determine.
We get to determine what the rest is. So I
think if I was gonna be involved in moving music
education these days, I would find people who understand that
it's not limited to this period of music, that is
not ephemeral, that it can be other things. How do
(26:04):
they all relate? Everything grows from that classical era. We
only had this music for three centuries, so let's just
say and from that, that's where the popular music evolved.
You can trace any form of popular music back to Baroque,
back to classic whatever it all moves from that.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Conductor Leonard Slatkin, If you're enjoying this episode, don't keep
it to yourself. Tell a friend, and be sure to
follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. When we come back, Leonard Slatkin
shares how a former president of the United States helped
sway him to accept the job offer in our nation's capital.
(26:57):
I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. In
addition to conducting most of the leading orchestras of the world,
Leonard Slatkin is also a composer, type of the antique
rome rich reliquary of lofty contemplation left at time by
(27:22):
buried centuries of pomp and power. I was honored to
perform the narration for one of Edgar Allen Poe's the
famous Poems, set to Slackkin's own composition. Here he is
conducting the Manhattan School of Music Symphony performing the Raven
four the Colisseum. I wanted to know about Leonard Slatkin's
(28:07):
very first opportunity leading an orchestra.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
I was a student at the Julliard School, which back
then is where the Manhattan School is now. So it
was one hundred and twenty second and Claremont.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
The old Juilliard the original Were you hired to play
was a conducting student student.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
There were only four of us, and that was nice,
and word kind of got out that there was this
kid who was sort of okay. And I was hired
by a man named David Epstein, who was the music
director in New York Symphony, to be his assistant. So
I mostly went to rehearsals and he let me conduct
one piece on a program one time, and he left
(28:48):
and they asked me if I were to become the
music director of the youth Orchestra. So I gave concerts
at Lincoln Center and at Carnegie but it was all
why I was still a student here in New York.
But the interesting story is how did I get to
Saint Louis UIs From there? The music director in Saint Louis,
Walter Siskin, was also the music director at the Aspen
Music Festival. In school back in the sixties. It was
(29:12):
a small It's not like Aspen today where there's six
seven hundred students and faculty. Back then it was one
hundred and twenty five students. We stayed there nine weeks.
Siskin really was very encouraging to me, and he's in
the third year of the four that I was there.
He invited the executive director of the Saint Louis Symphony,
where he was going to start in sixty eight, to
(29:34):
come and see me. They liked what they saw, and
they asked me to come and be the assistant conductor there.
This route is a little different. It doesn't happen that
way anymore. There are very few real assistant conductors. My
job was to sit there, listen to every rehearsal, and
be prepared if something happened. Today. The assistants, maybe they're
(29:56):
there with the music director. Maybe they just cover one
week of concerts. But this indoctrination, having to know so
much music every year, imagine look at any brochure. Now
add to that the children's concerts, the pops concerts, all
those things. In my first year in Saint Louis Is assistant,
I did eighty three children's concerts, eighty three of them,
(30:17):
and I remember this feel like that. The first one
was on a tour at Kennett, Missouri. So I did
this concert and had the Sources Apprentice on the program.
The traditional piece you all play for young people, it's Infantasia.
And the famous part about Sources Apprentice is that there's
a solo for this unwieldy instrument called the contrabassoon. It's
(30:38):
just a gigantic instrument that sounds like gas being passed
sometimes and the music goes yea ba yah bah and
then the bason goes bah like that. Well the bassoon
is came in wrong. And it was his first concerts,
just like it was my first concert. So yeah, and
he comes in and before I give the next time
(30:58):
and he goes shit, shit, and you know, there's like
two thousand kids. It's things good, My god. It was
a wonderful first concert. Memorable.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
So is it safe to say you can fill this
in for us the New York youths of it? Is
that your first conducting gig.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
First gig, yep, absolutely, I did some conducting before. Then.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
What was the big takeaway for you?
Speaker 2 (31:22):
From the takeaway was that I felt comfortable both as
an educator and as a conductor. Now, what I mean
by that is when you have young people who've never
played any of this music they're about to play, you
have to teach the music. If you go to a
New York filt mona, I could say Lois, Minnesota, whatever
it is. If you're playing standard rep like your Chaikowsky six,
(31:44):
even Maller nine. These days, the orchestrati knows the music
you're going to give mostly interpretive matters, wild sow, short, long.
But when it's kids, you have to be able to say,
I'm going to try to teach you the music, but
I'm also going to teach you the details of the piece,
the structure of the piece. So I learned that. I
(32:05):
learned how to communicate to these young people in the
most basic possible way, but without talking down to them.
Because I came from a family of musicians, I would
never do that. It was later that I would learn
the balance. When you stand in front of a professional orchestra,
what do you say? Don't repeat things that they already know.
Be very careful about the words you choose to tell
(32:27):
them something. It's very different. So the youth orchestra was good,
and I was a product of youth orchestras. In La
I played viola in one and that's where I started conducting.
When the conductor was called away at a rehearsal, he said,
it's lucky and you would like to conduct, And I said,
well sure, and he threw down the score of the
marriage figure overture, and I got up and conducted. Apparently
(32:49):
it was good enough that you let me do it
at the concert. Wow.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Now, someone at your level and with your experience in
this industry and this art form, when you move from
one place to another, when you eventually want up a
good example, I guess it is like, well, obviously, the
three big ones you correct me if I'm wrong in
terms of a real music director's position are Saint Louis
and DC and.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Detroit in the States. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Right, And then what position did you hold as a
music director overseas?
Speaker 2 (33:14):
I was the principal conductor of the BBC Symphony in
London for six years. I loved that. Oh so much fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Now, let's look at Saint Louis on the DC on
the Detroit. So you've obviously, or correct me if I'm wrong.
You've played with them and conducted them before you take
on the position.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yes, you test drive well. But in Saint Louis had
already been the assistant and assistant to the principal and
principal guests for ten years, so I'd worked with they
knew me. Washington, I hadn't been there very often. You
had played with them, I played with them quite a
while before, but they needed to arrange a concert to
see if that would work. I knew that Andre Preven
(33:52):
had already been asked and turned the job down. This
is to succeed Missislav Rostropovitch, who was bigger than life,
a tough job to do. So they arranged the concert
in the summer for me to come in and just
see if it was going to work. At intermission of
the concert, the then head of the Kennedy Center, who
was named James Wolfinson go on to head the World Bank, says, Oh,
(34:13):
there's somebody here who'd like to meet you, if you
don't mind, if we're not bothering you an intermission and
he brings in the Clintons and I can't do his voice,
but he asks I, certainly, I hope you'd be able
to come here and be all music director.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
So the president am I going to Leonard, I'd really
love it if you come and.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Play with us. Something like that. So I did that
for twelve years. Two set of terms.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
When you go to a place and you're there, like DC,
is it a tough decision? Like did you say to yourself?
I got to be in love with this thing. I
gotta be in love. You're gonna sign a contract for
multiple years.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Excellent question. I knew it was time to leave. Saint
Louis been there for ten is the secondary conductor, in
seventeen is music director, so twenty seven that's a long
time there in one place. And I knew I couldn't
do any more there to make them grow. They needed
to go another way. I didn't know what I wanted
to do next, and then this Washington thing came up,
and I thought, I've really tried to do something which
(35:13):
is really tough, and that's to be an American conductor,
raised in America, trained in America, leading an American orchestra.
There weren't very many of us doing that. Bernstein obviously
set the example, but after that, not so many. And
I thought the challenge of really bringing an American agenda
not for any patriotic or nationalistic reason. It's just the
(35:35):
love of the culture here and bringing the Kennedy Center
into that, and it's what James Wolfin's also wanted. And
after a few years, even though I would say the
relationship with the orchestra was okay, it wasn't like Saint Louis.
I never felt as connected to them, even it was
twelve years long. I loved the time there because I
got to meet people who changed the way the world
(35:56):
would be the next day, wouldn't like that, and the
stimulation of the conversations, all these things. It made it
really exciting for me. But ultimately I think the board said,
you know, we want a little more traditional base for
our orchestra. So twelve years left. Now I was pretty
sure I didn't want to take another orchestra, and I
(36:19):
was asked to guest conduct the Detroit, where I hadn't
been like twenty five years, and I didn't realize there
was a vacancy there. I didn't think about it, so
I was there. His name was Neme Yarve. I know
it was there a long time that Pacho's Paula's father,
and I fell in love with the hall. To me
an orchestra hall, it's the same as the strata Varius
(36:42):
is to the violinist, if you can get a good haul,
and there aren't that many good hauls, not really where
the sound is both intimate and open and warm. At
the same time, I thought I could do something with
this orchestra in that specific hall, and that's why I
took that job. It also became a little bit problematic
because my first year I only had time to do
(37:03):
five weeks because I was still guest conducting. The second
year I had a heart attack versut of two and
that put me out for three months. And then the
third year, well there wasn't a third year because the
orchestra went on strike for six months. So my job
became rebuilding, which is not exactly what I wanted to do.
And even though we did a lot of good things together,
(37:25):
I realized that this isn't what I wanted to do.
So after ten years, I said that's it and I'm
done and I will not take another music directorship anywhere.
I don't want it. I don't want to be an
administrator anymore. And it's changed. The profession is so different now.
It's dictated by marketing. It's dictated a lot by economics.
Of course understandable.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
It's an expensive industry.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
It's a very expensive industry and getting more expensive. And
is there a demand for it?
Speaker 3 (37:51):
Not?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
Really, it's all different now. I couldn't do what I
did in Saint Louis today. I just couldn't do it. It
wouldn't be allowed. Nobody would like that kind of not authoritarian.
I'm not like that. But I had my ideas and
I needed a partnership, which I had in Saint Louis
with the executive director and artistic administrator. We would set goals,
here's what we want to do in five years, this
(38:13):
is where we want to be. And the minute we
achieved one of the little goals within that framework, we
would just add another goal and we did it. You
can't do it that way anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
You know, every great city has its belt, it has
its perimeter of wealth. Every guy's eighty and every woman's
seventy five, and they all own the paper mill, and
they own the railroad, and they were all rich people
who are funding this propt this thing.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
There are the big difference. What is between those days
and now? It's really easy to define. Back sixty seventies,
even into the eighties, the people who were the civic
leaders and who had vested financial interest in the arts
loved the arts. They knew the arts. Not only did
they support it financially, they were patrons. They came, they
(38:58):
loved it. The chairman of the board in Saint Louis
was an amateur violinist. He went on the stage and
played the Bach double with Isaac Stern. You go ahead
and find any other person like that now, and I'll
give you another example. I say, Louis is easy. I
live there now. We had in the last twenty five
years a man and his wife who are incredible philanthropists
(39:20):
and patrons of the arts. They supported the symphony, the opera,
all these things. The manforded a company. He had a
company called Sentine. It was a health management among the
fortune twenty five and they gave money to the arts
like crazy. He dies. His name is Michael Nidorff. Two
weeks later, the new administration in the company ceased all
(39:42):
funding for the arts in the city. And that is
the problem with corporate America and it's lack of interest
in the arts. I don't know what we could do
about it. I've often thought maybe this is where podcasting, radio,
other things have a chance, maybe to get things back
to a basic level. There should be education for people
(40:03):
who are middle aged to say, here's classic one oh one,
let's learn about this music. Have people who can host shows,
describe it, do it video, do whatever you want. We
need to get back to an education method for people
who didn't have it when they were in school and
can't bring that to the table with their corporations.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Well, the question I have though, is that when you
go from Saint Louis to Washington, then on Detroit. I
would imagine in some cities, regardless of they're ups and
downs economically, there's still plenty of wealth and money there.
What was Detroit Like Detroit is a city in a
desperate city at time, What was happening when you got it.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
In two thousand and nine? When I got there, it
had already been suffering from the big decline that we
had economically, which is of course why this strike would happen,
and everybody saw it coming. People lost up to seventy
five percent of their portfolios. It was amazing, actually, And
it's easy for people to say, Okay, we got enough
(41:00):
people who are wealthy to support all this, but it's,
like you put it out, it's old money. And the
thing is, the new money wasn't there yet. These days,
they've done a pretty good job of reaching into the
community to be again, it's just a handful of people
can't do it has to be more across the board.
You've got to reach these people. The way to do
it is through education. You put education initiatives out there.
(41:21):
It's the one area in Detroit they have no trouble
raising money if it's targeted towards education.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Well, one thing I think is interesting because I've seen
this in New York now a couple of cycles where
they went from I don't think.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
Mozelle was there.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
It was Allan of course, and then Yap and now
is this the hunt for a music director and the
weight they put on that and the importance they put
on that, and like in New York, you feel, I'm
not criticizing the mom on the board, but you can
see there's a little wisp of they all want the
next Lenny.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
They want a superstar. There's never going to be a
next Lenny, right. We all know that I was always
the other Lenny. I was called that for years. Oh oh,
it's perfect either he was the son of Felix, the
son of Eleanor and the other Lenny. That was my
mantra for a while. This is going to sound radical,
(42:08):
and it's something I've been thinking about. Within the changes
of the so called classical music industry. I'm not sure
that we really need a music director, as the role
has usually been defined in the past, a music director
would spend at least half the season with the orchestra.
When you're looking at your Ormidies, your Zell's, your sholdies whatever.
(42:30):
The reason those orchestras sounded like that was because they
were there all the time, and they covered within their
strengths the basic repertoire so Ormedes, Slavic and whatever Zeala
is the classic repertoire shulties, the big romantic, large gestures,
and they got known for that. They were associated with
that repertoire. I wonder if we shouldn't do more something
(42:52):
like what the Europeans do. They have a principal conductor,
somebody who still does more concerts than anybody else. They
define find their roles that way. They tour with the orchestra.
But one person now cannot put a whole season together
with all the guests, all the repertoire. Even if you're
as incredibly talented as Gustavo is. He can't do this
(43:13):
alone anywhere. I could in the old days, because I
would spend twenty weeks in Saint Louis. There's more than
half the season, and I knew all this stuff. I
think having a principal conductor focusing on the repertoire, they
do well. I think another prediction, I mean that was
one prediction in a way. The second one is I
think orchestras themselves are beginning. We're seeing it ready to
take more control about the membership of the people who
(43:35):
constitute the orchestra. You know about the blind audition, Yes,
so the idea here was screens would go up. You
would never be able to see the person playing at
an audition to get an orchestra job, so therefore there
would be no discrimination. But you also didn't know where
they studied, where have they played before, what kind of
experience do they have to me? I understood it when
(43:58):
it went up, and it did help to create more
women in the orchestral workforce, but certainly did nothing for
diverse populations. Couldn't you couldn't see them, you couldn't know
anything about them. I think the day of the screen
needs to end, at least in the final round of auditions,
so it can be open about it. But I also
think that decision now, because the report was so vast,
(44:20):
now should lay in the hands of the orchestra itself.
Let them decide what they want their orchestra to be.
Most music directors today don't have this kind of gravitas
of the older conductors. They don't come from the same
kind of generation, they don't come from the same kind
of training. Let them do what they do well, bring
in some guests to do it. Let the orchestra choose
(44:41):
its own membership. So if you have that, then you're
in a whole different world. You have you're not out
searching like crazy like these orchestras are. It's going to
take two three years to find somebody. The orchestra goes leaderless,
So who's choosing the members of the orchestra? The orchestra itself? Anyway?
Why not just keep that?
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Think that One of the things I'm concerned about lately,
of course, isn't in the sexual assault scandal at the Philharmonic.
And I think Gary Ginstling, our executive director, he's beautifully beautiful,
because this thingn't gets dumped on very well. Somebody does
something to somebody and you really you have no idea,
and then it gets dumped on you to solve this problem.
It's really really tough, and you know, as you said,
they're going to pick their own members. That's a very
(45:21):
tough thing for the organization to process now about what
our responsibilities and what our obligations are in terms of
managing like and of course people that commit those crimes,
if you will, and the exhibit that behavior, you want
the matter there as soon as possible and getting rid
of them as impossible, get possible.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
Somebody fired in an orchestra is a minimum two year process,
and it usually doesn't succeed. So, yes, there are only
three ways you can usually get somebody out. One is
for harassment, like we're talking about here. Two is for ineviation,
hard to prove because you're gonna get drug testing after
a concert. And the third is when you insult somebody disparagement.
(45:58):
Yes there was in New Jersey they used to have
a clause. Maybe they still do. The conductor's not allowed
to scowl at the orchestra because they had a music
director who scowled. I can see that court case trying
to define scowl.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Another thing I would assume is grounds for dismissal is
in subordinate, and that's the way I was looking for it.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I'm sorry, that's how.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
We got there. You go, how many times have you tried.
I'm assuming almost never have you tried to get somebody
to play something the way you want and they wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Hey, it's happened. And I can tell you. When I
made my debut with the Neark Philharmonic, they used to
have this thing where they would test the young conductors
who come in and I was doing for coffee of
five and at one point I stopped and the first
clarinet Stanley Drucker, said, excuse me. You know in this place,
I'm playing this on an A clarinet instead of a
(46:44):
B flat clarinet, but I know your scores in't ce
what note do I have? And that just looks at
I said, well, you have a concert, be natural? Why
are you playing on an a clarinet? So I shot
it back to him. I know that's a little difficult.
But the hard one was what the viola's There's a
place in the last one that goes YadA YadA da,
And I looked at the viola's the verse it's not
together and the first viella says, yes it is. I said, no,
(47:07):
it's not. He says, don't worry, it'll be fine at
the concert. And I said, do you think we could
get this be fine now. So all you can do
is try to find a way. Probably today that would
be in subordination. You can't do a lot of things.
If you're teaching conductors, you have to ask permission to
change the hand position. You can't just go I can't
imagine my piano teacher having to go with what piano
(47:30):
teachers do today. You have to have the door open.
People have to see it. There are teachers who now
record the lessons to make sure there's nothing like that happening.
But that was how discipline was, and that's how we
had all these great artists. So I don't know if
that will ever change. And yes, we need to be,
of course, very careful. We have to choose our words carefully,
we have to choose what we do. But maybe it's
(47:51):
gone a little too far.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
You just released a book, eight Symphonic master Works of
the twentieth Century.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
What's that book about. This is the fourth book I've
had published. The first two were kind of memoir autobiography,
stories that the third one was about the industry some
of the things we've been talking about, and this one
is more dedicated for musicians, particularly conductors, but not exclusively.
I took eight pieces of music, very familiar works write
(48:19):
a Spring, La, Maia, Young Person's Got It, the Orchestra,
Barbara Daggio, Sover and so on, and I literally analyze
them bar by bar saying this is what the conductor
needs to know before you ever step foot on the podium.
This is my way of saying to you technically, how
you do it, emotionally, how you get into it. And
(48:40):
in many cases, when there are three, four or five
different ways to do a passage, I'll say, these are
the things you can do here. There really hasn't been
a book quite like this before, and I believe it
will be the start of a series. I know the
second volume will come out in October, and I'm hoping
that every eight or nine months will have It's been
fabulous for me. It's imagine if somebody said, Okay, here's
(49:02):
something you did when you started in your career, a play.
Whatever it is. Now, we want you to go back
and look at it again. But with all this experience
you have for what you bring to it, you learn I'm.
Speaker 1 (49:12):
Coach writing a play now with a friend of mine,
my own former acting teacher. I'm just assistant, but.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Aren't you learning?
Speaker 1 (49:18):
So I'm going back to it. That's what I said
to myself. I said, this is my opportunity to understand.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
I understand the exactly, and that's this book is like
therapy for me in my work.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
I've joked with people before when I was watching popular
music with some friends of mine at an event of
some type, and then of course always in the symphony.
I turned to my friend at one concert and I'd
said this before, and I said to this friend of mine,
for the first time I shared with him. I said,
look at these people. Do you see what they're doing?
And he leaned into me. I whispered, and he said
what And I said, they're all doing the same thing
(49:50):
at the same time, led by this man to me,
I just crave that. I crave watching those ensembles and
watching them do this thing together.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
It's like when we renovated the Kennedy Center. I asked
President Clinton to come and conduct the Stars and Stripes
at the end, and he didn't have a chance to rehearse.
He had me go to the White House to give
him a lesson, but he already knew. He was saying,
what do I do about that place where the brass
slowed out. Well actually know what to do, so he comes.
I introduce him, ladies and gentlemen. I'm really sick of
doing stars and stripes with his orchestra, so I'm going
(50:22):
to turn over to our new assistant conductor, the President
of the United States. He does it. It goes just fine,
and in his book he wrote how this was really
the best thing during his presidency because he got one
hundred people to do what he wanted.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
My thanks to Leonard Slatkin, I'm now like Baldwin. Here's
the thing has brought to you by iHeartRadio. I'll leave
you with Prairie Knight from Aaron Copeland's Billy the Kid
Ballet Suite. Leonard Slatkin conducts the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.
Speaker 5 (51:03):
Yea no camag
Host
Alec Baldwin
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.