Classical Crossroads: The Path Forward For Music in the 21st Century by Leonard Slatkin (Amadeus Press, 2022)

—Cathy Ritchie

At age 78 and with more than 50 years at a podium, conductor Leonard Slatkin knows his way around an orchestra. In his multi-decade career he has led the Detroit, St. Louis, BBC, Nashville, and National Symphony groups, and made guest appearances with numerous others. He has taught, recorded extensively, and won Grammys along the way. And he has written two well-received memoirs. Solid credentials.

His latest title, Classical Crossroads, is somewhat less about himself personally and more about broader artistic and societal issues that concern him deeply. His intended audience is clearly aspiring conductors, but even I, musically unschooled in every way, gleaned much from his ability to make his art’s technicalities totally graspable and engrossing. Slatkin also voices concerns regarding national events of the past three years, especially the devastating impact the pandemic continues to wreak on the world’s creative productivity. He offers personal reflections and suggestions on how the arts, especially through live musical performance, can restructure themselves if/when the Covid-19 crisis is ever fully behind us.

For two-thirds of his text, Slatkin describes orchestral music-making from just about every angle imaginable. His chapters are brief but substantial; topics include size, nationalism, agents, diversity, soloists, audiences, repertoire, performance practice, rehearsing, auditions, and much more. He skillfully integrates selected reminiscences from his own conducting/music directorship experience, interjecting diverting bits of music history as relevant.

Slatkin has been a proud advocate of American conductors throughout his career, and thus I found his discussion of music directors’ nationalities especially enlightening. For most of the last century and into the current one, this nation’s major orchestras have largely been led by foreign-born conductors. (He declares that “as of this writing,” the Philadelphia, Minnesota and Chicago ensembles have never had any born-and-bred Americans at the podium.) Fortunately, Massachusetts native Leonard Bernstein broke the mold as a conductor and in so much else—“paving the way,” says Slatkin, for other American leaders, though progress in this area continues to be slow.

Slatkin also describes what actually happens on stage both before and after an orchestral concert—why the various players sit where they do, the ways in which size does indeed matter, and how a conductor, well, conducts himself (yes, almost always “himself”) during rehearsal and performance. Audience members may accept the tuxedoed scene on stage at face value, but our guide tells us there’s much more to see than a casual glance can reveal.

This maestro has his opinions, to be sure, perhaps most emphatically that the practice of blind auditioning for orchestra seat vacancies should be abolished. As he comments: “Times have changed….In a way, the screen now represents a bit of an insult to those who are making the decision as to who will join the orchestra. Do we really believe that musicians of today cannot come to a fair conclusion irrespective of the candidate’s gender and race?...The screen takes away certain parts of the musical experience that musicians will encounter in the actual job. We do not rehearse or perform behind a barrier. Why should we have it there for auditions?”

This book’s final section consists of verbatim entries from Slatkin’s 2020 online blog, a sobering year for the nation as a whole, and for artistic institutions in particular. He describes in great detail what he and other music makers endured during the early months of Covid-19 panic: uncertainty, professional cancellations, travel angst, and stretches of inactivity resulting in personal despair.

I found this portion of his narrative interesting to a point, but it probably could /should have been shortened, as he quickly establishes his point of view and then continues to offer perhaps too many variations on his theme. This particular chapter simply feels a bit jarring and out-of-place compared to the preceding sections.

However….as my eyes and brain had actually reached the “glazing over” stage, Slatkin describes being asked by a violinist “what music we might use to improve mental health as we cope with the pandemic.” When Slatkin replies that his number one recommendation is Aaron Copland’s incomparable Appalachian Spring (my all-time favorite classical piece), all (or nearly all) was forgiven. 

Throughout this book, Leonard Slatkin proves himself a thoughtful artistic citizen who cares deeply about our world, communicating his impressions with skill and grace. He’s a man worth a listen.