{"id":6381,"date":"2014-09-01T05:09:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T04:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=6381"},"modified":"2014-09-01T05:17:01","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T04:17:01","slug":"slatkin-at-70-happy-birthday-leonard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2014\/09\/01\/slatkin-at-70-happy-birthday-leonard\/","title":{"rendered":"Slatkin at 70- Happy Birthday, Leonard"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sorry- there\u2019s simply no way that Leonard\u00a0Slatkin<\/span>\u00a0is 70 years old.<\/div>\n
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\"Leonard-Slatkin-001\"<\/a>

Shhh…. don’t tell them I’m not still 45.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For many, many American conductors and orchestral musicians of my generation, Leonard was the first superstar conductor who seemed of our time and of our culture. Before Leonard, conductors were mostly mute, brooding, enigmatic figures with accents and capes. Even that other famous Leonard seemed more a product of an already distant golden age.\u00a0\u00a0I first encountered Leonard\u00a0Slatkin<\/span>\u00a0via the Saint Louis Symphony\u2019s syndicated weekly radio broadcasts. In those halcyon days, one could hear a live broadcast of one of the great American orchestras every night of the week, and Saint Louis, at that time the kid brother alongside the giants in New York, Cleveland and Chicago, stood out under Leonard\u2019s leadership not only for their virtuosity but for the astonishing breadth of their repertoire. Even then, I had the conducting bug, and I was fascinated to hear Leonard speak about music from Adams to Bruckner with genuine musical insight, wit and heart. To the extent I ever heard any of my other favourite conductors speak back then, they all seemed to sound either like one of Tolkien\u2019s wizards or a Bond villain. Leonard was refreshingly American- direct, funny and wise. He was the first one that seemed be living in the world I was growing up in. It simply can\u2019t be that he\u2019s now 70.<\/div>\n
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That I would one day get to study with the man whose radio broadcasts had already taught me so much is one of life\u2019s little delights. In 2001, I had the great privilege to participate in the National Conducting Institute at the Kennedy\u00a0Center<\/span>\u00a0in Washington. Leonard set up the\u00a0NCI<\/span>\u00a0to give conductors with the talent and aspiration to lead major orchestras a chance to cut their teeth with the National Symphony Orchestra. To have a musician with Leonard\u2019s vast experience at your side discreetly advising you on matters both musical and psychological is surely the best possible way to find your confidence working with 100 musicians of vast experience. However, Leonard is never one to hog the limelight- he made sure we all had mentors from within the orchestra also giving us feedback our work after each session. After the\u00a0NCI<\/span>, when I would occasionally return to Washington as a cover conductor, Leonard was also generous in sharing his time and experience. I particularly treasure my memory of a short session we had on Mahler\u2019s Second Symphony that Leonard squeezed in between an\u00a0NSO<\/span>\u00a0rehearsal and a session on\u00a0Corigliano<\/span>\u2019s Second Symphony with the President\u2019s Own across town. Leonard\u2019s teaching is short of philosophical\u00a0gobbledegook<\/span>\u00a0and long on plain-spoken insight. Every single thing he said in those few minutes proved to be\u00a0pricelessly<\/span>\u00a0useful when I conducted the piece for the first time the following week.<\/div>\n
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The sheer\u00a0mathematic<\/span>\u2019s of Leonard\u2019s accomplishment defies understanding, starting with the number three. To have led the three orchestras in Saint Louis, Washington and now Detroit puts him in a most elite club- only Lorin\u00a0Maazel<\/span>\u00a0has led three American orchestras of similar standing. The ultimate achievement for any conductor must be to build a great orchestra- something Leonard did early in his career in Saint Louis. Today we see him re-building a great orchestra in Detroit that has come through difficult times in his own image- savvy, visionary and virtuosic. And then there is the breadth of Leonard’s repertoire.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>For many years, we\u2019ve<\/span>\u00a0gathered yearly \u201crepertoire reports\u201d on favourite colleagues and friends at my blog- an annual summary of every piece someone has conducted that year. Every year, it is Leonard whose repertoire list dwarf\u2019s everyone else, and it\u2019s a list that always includes many premieres, oddities, tricky accompaniments and mega-works. Put simply, Leonard seems to effortlessly conduct about twice as many pieces as anyone else in the business every year, and he does an astounding range of repertoire so well. His contributions to American music are well known and rightly celebrated, but he\u2019s also great Anglophile, having made great recordings of works by Elgar and Vaughan Williams. Not long ago, I was in a friend\u2019s car- he was playing a CD of the Brahms D Major Serenade, and it immediately struck me as one of the best performances I\u2019d heard of the piece. It\u2019s a personal favourite, but few conductors bother with it, and fewer still do it well. Of course, when I asked, I discovered it was not some glowering Teutonic maestro conducting, but Leonard.<\/div>\n
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Having gone on so long, I must mention one more aspect of Leonard\u2019s musicianship. Conductors are here to be argued over- people may love or hate your way with Brahms or Mahler- but there\u2019s one aspect of Leonard\u2019s conducting that is, in my opinion, beyond debate. He\u2019s simply one of the most phenomenal accompanists who have ever stood upon the podium. Accompanying is the most demanding part of any conductor\u2019s job. To do it well takes real technique, a gift for anticipation, flexibility, empathy, and a sense of when to lead and when to follow. It\u2019s a job I don\u2019t think anyone in the business does better than Leonard. I\u2019ve<\/span>\u00a0heard innumerable soloists say the same thing, and veteran soloists tend to be even tougher on conductors than orchestral musicians. Leonard has one of the most remarkable skill-sets of any conductor I\u2019ve<\/span>\u00a0come across- an astounding ear, an ability to grasp almost any style, a consummate stick technique and an ability to find simple and pragmatic solutions to complex musical problems. In a field not generally associated with humility, Leonard is always ready to deploy that skill set in support of a soloist or a world\u00a0preimere<\/span>\u00a0with the same youthful zeal he brings to the great symphonic works.<\/div>\n
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70 is young for a conductor, but forget 70. Leonard remains a conductor for our time and for tomorrow. Happy forty-fifth birthday, Leonard!<\/div>\n
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