Ravinia 2019, Issue 5, Week 9

A great proponent of music education throughout his career, Slatkin first appeared at Ravinia in the early 1970s leading the CSO in children’s concerts. He then returned in 1990 with the American Soviet Youth Orchestra, and a 2005 concert saw Slatkin team up with fellow lifelong artist-educators Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway. (The Galways return to Ravinia later this season, on September 10, having recently been honored for their education work at the festival at the Music Matters benefit and with Ravinia’s Edward Gordon Award.) Leonard Slatkin’s most recent appearance at Ravinia, in 2008, featured Denis Matsuev performing Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto in his Chicago Symphony Orchestra debut, a combination that will be reprised on August 7. Washington taught me a lot,” Slatkin says. He is working on a book, talking to people in various fields about solutions in arts education, because “I’m tired of hearing about problems.” Slatkin personally believes that music could be very effec- tively folded into history curricula; the example of Beethoven and Napoleon is only the most obvious. (Beethoven originally planned to dedicate his Third Symphony to Napoleon, then re- scinded it after the French leader had himself made emperor.) “Any great work of art reflects society at the time,” Slatkin says. “Why not teach that?” Modern electronic resources, he pointed out, could easily integrate audio and video into their texts. Slatkin also composes music, but “only when I want to”—in other words, he doesn’t accept commissions. But semi-retire- ment may allow more time for that too. His wife, Cindy McTee, is a noted composer—he led the Chicago premiere of her work Circuits at Ravinia with the CSO in 2003—“and I want to spend quality time with her, enjoying what we worked so hard for. I’ll know when it’s time to lay the stick down.” A year removed from being the music director anywhere, “I never realized how stressful it was,” Slatkin says. Heart bypass surgery in the spring of 2018, shortly before his previously announced departure from the Detroit Symphony, was another reminder to take a look at the rest of his life. He and McTee recently moved to Saint Louis, where he has deep ties and can easily root for the Cardinals. With more time and attention to spare, “I think now orchestras are getting more out of me.” David Lewellen is a Milwaukee-based journalist who writes regularly for the Chicago Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony, and other classical websites. RAVINIA FILE PHOTOS 28 RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JULY 29 – AUGUST 11, 2019