Author archive for leonard slatkin

  • St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Jazz Festival

    January 8, 2024

    The SLSO and Slatkin reunite for a three-concert festival exploring the intersection of jazz and classical music. Each program ends with a work by Gershwin. Fittingly, Slatkin and the orchestra are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their acclaimed recordings of Gershwin’s works on Vox Records, which have recently been re-released by Naxos.

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  • JANUARY 2024

    And a joyous New Year to all of you! Hopefully 2023 ended on a high note.

    While most people head home for the holidays, Cindy and I usually go on an extended vacation. For the most part, we travel to places that are somewhat remote. Past trips have taken us to Morocco, the Galapagos, and the Amazon. This time we explored Tanzania.

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  • “Maestro”: Bernstein Comes to the Big Screen

    At several points during my viewing of this film, one question kept nagging at me: Who is the target audience? To answer that query, it is necessary to understand the content of this movie.

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  • Slatkin’s New Book Available for Pre-Sale

    December 8, 2023

    Leonard is pleased to announce that his latest book, Eight Symphonic Masterworks of the Twentieth Century: A Study Guide for Conductors, will be published by Rowman & Littlefield on March 5, 2024. The essays provide an almost bar-by-bar analysis of the scores, detailing the decisions the conductor must make to bring these works to life.

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  • DECEMBER 2023

    To say that November was a jam-packed month would be an understatement. With the middle portion of a six-week concert tour in full swing, I realized that no two works would be repeated during this trip. Only one of them was new to me, however, and as I explained in last month’s journal entry, The Fountains of Rome became an old friend during the first stop back in October.

    Continuing in Spain, I moved on from Valencia to Madrid. In times’ past, the country, in general, was not a pleasant place to make music. Its resident orchestras were undisciplined and did not possess the musical values I was used to in other parts of the world. That has changed drastically over the past fifteen years or so, with exciting and vibrant music-making now taking place throughout Spain, even in smaller cities.

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  • Elite Recordings for Vox Re-Released

    November 29, 2023

    Naxos has released audiophile editions of two acclaimed Vox recordings conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring the first and third symphonies of Rachmaninov. Karl Nehring of Classical Candor characterized the albums as “excellent performances, excellently recorded, making them eminently recommendable for fans of these gorgeously tuneful symphonies.”

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  • Rave Reviews in Spain

    November 9, 2023

    Music critics offered positive assessments of Leonard’s concerts in Valencia and Madrid. Writing for Scherzo, respected writer and composer Tomás Marco characterized Slatkin as “an interesting and reliable maestro who accompanied Achúcarro very well and in the second part made an excellent version of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1.”

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  • Slatkin in Spain, Poland, Ireland, and France

    November 1, 2023

    Leonard is conducting in Europe this fall, with concerts in Spain, Poland, Ireland, and France. Program highlights include Resphigi’s Pines of Rome in Valencia, Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 in Madrid, Gershwin’s American in Paris in Katowice, Copland’s Symphony No. 3 and Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony in Dublin, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in Lyon.

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  • NOVEMBER 2023

    The road beckoned, and I travelled west and east for what I hoped would be lovely sets of concerts. That wish has so far come true, but the intrusions on beauty by events taking place at home and abroad prevented total immersion in the music.

    Over and over, I kept wondering what those of us who practice our art in public could do as war broke out in Gaza. And as usual, there was no answer. Organizations and individual artists can make statements, but ultimately we are powerless to do much more than offer some sort of diversion for a little while to those who attend our performances. The audience comes to the concert hall or opera house to escape the outside world. And, to an even greater degree, so do my fellow musicians, who work tirelessly to get to the heart and soul of the music we play.

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  • All-New Episodes of “The Slatkin Shuffle”

    October 1, 2023

    New episodes of Leonard’s weekly radio program, The Slatkin Shuffle, air every Sunday at 3:00 p.m. Central on Classic 107.3 FM. Join Leonard as he plays random selections from the nearly 10,000 tracks on his iPad and shares anecdotes about the eclectic collection of songs in his playlist. Tune in at 107.3FM/96.3HD2 or online. Plus, stream more than 40 episodes on demand at SoundCloud.

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