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