Leonard Slatkin

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2000

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is the conductor Leonard Slatkin. An American, he is about to take on the mantle of chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Renouned for his championing of both the American and British cannons, his aim has always been to demystify music of all kinds. He has spun discs on a pirate radio station and played honky tonk piano in a jazz bar. His parents' Hollywood String Quartet was the best known band in town and the Slatkin household was often filled with film stars. From these two influences he developed his love of chamber music and a passion for Doris Day. In conversation with Sue Lawley, he talks about his life and work and chooses eight records to take to the mythical island.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Danny Boy by Percy Grainger Book: Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin Luxury: Wine

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in the year 2000, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a conductor. He was born and brought up in Hollywood. The studios and their stars, Danny Kay, Frank Sinatra and Doris Day among them, were part of his everyday life. His parents were musicians and he began playing the violin at the age of three. By 15 he was playing cocktail piano in an LA bar.
0:50.0	He studied at the Juilliard School of Music and since then he's enjoyed a long career as one of America's most famous conductors.
0:57.0	A consistent champion of English music later this year he takes up the post of conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and in
1:04.4	2001 will become the first foreign maestro to conduct the last night of the
1:09.2	proms. I think I'm looked at as the non-British savior of British music, he says.
1:15.0	He is Leonard Slatkin.
1:17.0	Why does it need saving in your view, Leonard, or what does it need saving from?
1:20.0	I don't think it needs saving from anything other than the fact that very much
1:23.7	like American music people tend to isolate the music of their own country. The only way that
1:29.8	the music gets heard in broad fashion is for conductors from other nationalities to pick it up.
1:36.6	Can you imagine if Beethoven and Brahms were only played by German conductors or if Debusie and Ravel were only done by French.
1:43.0	Well, for the most part, English music seems confined primarily to English
1:47.1	conductors and artists, and the same for American music.
1:50.0	But not in your case, of course.
1:51.0	I mean, you spent a lot of time selling it around the world.
1:53.4	I don't have to sell it too hard because the music is great.
1:56.8	I think one point though is that people seem to be interested that I will have a specific take on the music, that it will seem different because somebody
2:07.2	who's not English is doing it.
2:08.4	Do you think it does?
2:09.4	No, I think it sounds very much the same.
	...

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