November 2006

Leonard Slatkin

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Leonard Slatkin, Music Director of the National Symphony Orchestra, shares with host Gilbert Kaplan the music he loves and the musicians he admires with a little “Beltway” gossip along the way – Condoleezza Rice “comes backstage with her bodyguard detail and loves to talk about music.” The “creators and recreators that really drove him to music”: Fritz Reiner (“With just a simple flick of the wrist he could produce the most dramatic sound you could imagine.”); his mother Eleanor Aller (cello) and father, Felix Slatkin (violin) of The Hollywood String Quartet (Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht); Hindemith, whose “time is coming” (Concert Music for String Orchestra and Brass); also his own Grammy-winning recording of an admired composer, William Bolcom (Songs of Innocence and of Experience).