STORIED CONDUCTOR WILL MAKE FIRST VISIT TO VSO
A lot has changed in the music world, Slatkin says, but not his enthusiasm for new works
“The musical world has changed a lot over my career,” veteran American conductor Leonard Slatkin told me in a delightful telephone interview a few weeks ago.
“My way of running an orchestra has become very old-fashioned. The way we hire musicians, the way we run rehearsals — all changed. The only thing that's stayed pretty much constant is my enthusiasm for introducing new works.”
The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra regularly invites guest conductors to the Orpheum Theatre, but the appearance of Slatkin is something quite extraordinary. His resumé is almost impossibly distinguished, and his reputation is secure as a leading light in the world of conductors.
Born in 1944 in Los Angeles, Slatkin trained at Juilliard, then held music director posts with the New Orleans Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony, Washington's National Symphony Orchestra, and the Detroit Symphony; that last position he relinquished in 2018. Along the way he was also principal guest conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Somehow, amid such a busy career, Slatkin has never visited Vancouver. He's here in early March for a trio of VSO performances, and I can only say it's about time. His program, marketed as Spanish Adventures: Don Quixote, includes a starter by Albeniz; Richard Strauss' tone poem with solo cello, Don Quixote; and a wonderfully titled new work by Mason Bates, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology.
I asked Slatkin about moving on from music direction to become a globe-trotting guest baton, a kind of speed dating with orchestras.
He expressed no regrets; Slatkin now gets to conduct where he wants and what he wants.
“And I can at last focus on writing books about music. I am concentrating on music education and teaching. But I still enjoy happy opportunities to meet new orchestras.”
Somewhat unusually for a guest conductor but par for the course for this guest, Slatkin has programmed a major work by a contemporary composer as the cornerstone of his first Vancouver visit. At every stage of his long career he has championed new works.
“I have not changed my habits as a composer or a conductor. I look for what makes this person distinctive, what is the voice in this piece, what is the new language being explored. When my reaction is that I've never before heard a piece like that, as it was with the Bates, I am immediately very interested and search out more music by that composer.”
The Bates work, which takes its title from Jorge Luis Borges, is described by the composer — and an occasional DJ — as “A psychedelic carnival of the animals ... presented in 11 interlocking movements.” Slatkin enthuses: “There is some amazing harmonic language in this
new work. It's about 35 minutes long, and an audience can really get to understand and enjoy what Bates is up to.”
How does the contemporary work pair with Strauss' Don Quixote?
“I've conducted this combination a couple of times, because when you do the Strauss you already have a good-sized orchestra, and you look for someone gifted who is writing for those forces.”
Listeners interested in hearing more from the current crop of U.S. composers may well want to compare and contrast Bates' symphonic zoo with Missy Mazoli's opera Song from the Uproar: The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt.
City Opera Vancouver mounts the Canadian premiere of Mazoli's one-act saga of an intrepid explorer and writer on Feb. 29 and March 2 at 7:30 p.m., and March 3 at 2 p.m. at the restored York Theatre.
Soprano Marian Newman sings the title role, and City Opera's new maven Gordon Gerrard conducts.