Leonard Slatkin

US conductor Leonard Slatkin has been music director of orchestras including the Detroit, St Louis and National symphonies, Orchestre National de Lyon and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

- Interview by Amanda Holloway

At 81, he continues to conduct, record and write books about symphonic masterworks (published by Bloomsbury). In March his recording with the LA Film Orchestra of Pictures at an Exhibition: The Paintings of Bob Peak, ten original compositions inspired by the designer of iconic film posters, will be released on Warner Classics.

Because I came from this incredibly talented musical family, the first pieces that I heard became influential. Every night after my parents finished their work in the film studios – my father led the orchestra at 20th Century Fox and my mother was the first cellist at Warner Bros – the two other members of their quartet, the Hollywood String Quartet, would come over and rehearse. I used to sit on the stairwell listening to the rehearsals and I was totally fascinated with the sound. The first conscious memory of a piece that really impacted me (I was probably three-and-a-half) was the Sixth String Quartet by HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS, and part of it, the second movement, reminded me of teddy bears dancing. The piece introduced me to the world of the string quartet, which remains for me the highest form of writing that any composer of note could achieve.