When Kenneth Schermerhorn died in 2005, after more than two decades at the helm of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, the maestro left an unusually large void. With the orchestra set to unveil its $120 million performance facility—an event meant to catapult the group onto the world stage—the NSO lacked artistic leadership at perhaps its most pivotal juncture. While the NSO searched for a permanent music director, it hit upon a dramatic short-term solution: Call Leonard Slatkin.
As the man who built the St. Louis Symphony from a second-tier outfit into a top-level orchestra, Slatkin seemed uniquely suited to develop the Nashville Symphony's musical polish and national reputation. Symphony President Alan Valentine persuaded Slatkin to sign on, first for the new hall's gala opening, then for a three-year term as a music advisor. His benchmark would come when Nashville hosted the 2007 conference of the American Symphony Orchestra League—a coming-out party that would test the NSO's mettle.
Had neither the orchestra nor its exacting interim conductor met the challenge, it would have been a disaster. Instead, discerning audiences came away pleasantly surprised—including the maestro himself.
"I found the orchestra much beyond what I expected," Leonard Slatkin recalls, praising the orchestra's players (and its management) for ambition and achievement. "The definition of 'Music City' has expanded during the last three years," he says, and over the telephone he gamely tries on a Southern accent: "Y'all should be really proud!"
This weekend, Slatkin closes the circle on his formal affiliation with the Nashville Symphony, revisiting some of the music that began the partnership. The program will include standards such as Brahms' sunny Second Symphony and Bruch's Violin Concerto. But it's safe to say that the program's newer, less familiar centerpiece rests closer to the conductor's heart, to the spirit of his tenure here, and to the NSO's rising status.
Slatkin first conducted Joan Tower's Made in America here three years ago, for a CD recording and for a "hard-hat" concert given privately to the construction workers who completed the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. In some ways, it was a risky choice. Sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, Made in America was commissioned by an unusual coalition of 65 smaller-budget orchestras. It was unfamiliar to the vast majority of NSO subscribers, let alone the workers whose sweat and sinew erected the symphony hall.
"A conductor with less vision would have thrown in some 'normal' pieces," says Roger Wiesmeyer, the NSO's English-horn player.
But Slatkin gambled on the work's inherent democracy. This was music composed for a broad range of professional, community and even youth orchestras, written to speak to audiences in cosmopolitan cities and in small towns. Tower's decision to draw her main themes from "America the Beautiful" reflects this populist context.
The workers responded with an ovation. Scarcely less enthusiastic was NARAS. The Nashville Symphony's CD of Made in America and two other works by Tower—one of her generation's leading composers and a long-time friend of Slatkin's—garnered three Grammys last year, including the award for best orchestral performance.
The NSO's enthusiasm about contemporary American music, Slatkin says, was one of its biggest appeals. When he began his 17-year tenure in St. Louis, he explains, German and Austrian repertoire dominated U.S. symphony halls. He made a point to program American works, and his many 1980s recordings of home-team composers helped to change orchestral fashions nationwide.
In Nashville, Slatkin exulted in programming American music. His selections ranged from younger composers like Cindy McTee, through elders like the recently deceased Lukas Foss, to lesser-known works by established masters such as Barber and Copland. Under his leadership, the Symphony continued to emphasize new music, winning an ASCAP Adventurous Programming Award for prominently featuring contemporary works.
It is therefore encouraging that Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony have been so widely applauded for Tower's programmatically American piece. Don't imagine that the music is cheaply sentimental, much less jingoistic: Slatkin praises Tower's "Stravinskian energy and vitality," and her moments of lyricism arise from a ground of struggle, with its hallowed theme likely to work for many listeners more on a subliminal level. But Tower's clarity of gesture and form make her music both accessible and compelling.
The same can be said for Leonard Slatkin's conducting. Revisiting Made in America makes a nice coda for Slatkin's NSO tenure, after exciting performances of Barber and Beethoven in the official season finale last month. Asked what he takes away from his work here—besides the cowboy boots presented as a lighthearted goodbye gift at the Beethoven concert—Slatkin replies that he has reached a point in life where he doesn't think in terms of career advancement.
"My job now is to be of service," Slatkin says, "to go where I can help out with what I've learned." Right now, that's Detroit, where he serves as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. On off days, you can find the maestro there in the Motown Museum—seeking yet another tributary of American music.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
