Leonard Slatkin at the White House (July 9, 1981)

Описание: Natural sound and voice over footage via satellite of: White House event, Mozart performing at event with President Ronald Reagan and other government officials present, conductor Leonard Slatkin speaking.
Reporter: King, Susan

Leonard Edward Slatkin (born September 1, 1944) is an American conductor, author and composer.[1]

Early life and education[edit]
Slatkin was born in Los Angeles to a Jewish musical family that came from areas of the Russian Empire now in Ukraine. His father, Felix Slatkin, was the violinist, conductor and founder of the Hollywood String Quartet, and his mother, Eleanor Aller, was the cellist with the quartet. His brother, Frederick, now a cellist, traced the family's original name as Zlotkin, and adopted that form of the family surname for himself professionally. Frederick Zlotkin has spoken of the family lineage as follows:

"The Zlotkin/Slatkin lineage is Russian-Jewish. The first Zlotkin arrival to the US was Felix's father, grandpa Chaim Peretz Zlotkin, who came to settle with relatives in St. Louis in 1904; he (or the clerk at Ellis Island) changed the name. He probably came from the town of Mogilev [now Mohyliv-Podilskyi], from a shtetl (the Russians forced most Jews to live in villages outside of the major cities)...The Altschuler [Aller] side of the family is really rife with musicians. [My grandfather] Grisha's uncle, Modest Altschuler, was a cellist (making me 4th generation) and he had quite a career. Among other things, he did the St. Petersburg premiere of Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence Sextet. When he came to America he formed the Russian Symphony Orchestra (early 1900s)."
Slatkin studied at Indiana University and Los Angeles City College before attending the Juilliard School, where he studied conducting under Jean Morel. He also studied with Walter Susskind at the Aspen Music Festival and School.[2]

Career[edit]
Slatkin's conducting debut was in 1966 when he became artistic director and conductor of the award-winning New York Youth Symphony, and in 1968 Walter Susskind named him the assistant conductor of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. While in St. Louis, Slatkin hosted for three years a weekly KDNA radio station program called The Slatkin Project.[3] He left St. Louis in 1977 to become music director of the New Orleans Symphony.

He led a series of Beethoven festivals with the San Francisco Symphony during the late 1970s and early 1980s. These annual concerts, held during June, included the orchestra's final concert in San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House in 1980, which featured a performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony.

Slatkin returned to Saint Louis in 1979 as music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. The national profile of the orchestra increased notably under his tenure, and the SLSO became one of the most acclaimed orchestras in the country. The ensemble toured and recorded frequently and impressed critics and audiences alike with its fine musicianship and creative musical direction.