When, in November 2024, Herbert Blomstedt conducted the Philharmonia in Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at London’s Royal Festival Hall, the Guardian described the performance as ‘one of the finest Mahler Ninths one is likely to hear’, adding that ‘the hurtling rondo was terrifyingly vivid and the final Adagio Olympian’. Remarkably, Blomstedt was 98 at the time. Nor was this his final performance, as he went on to conduct the same symphony in San Francisco the following spring.
Mahler was just one of several composers in whose music Blomstedt excelled over his exceptional seven-decade career – German and Austrian repertoire, in particular, were his forte with his performances and recordings of Brahms and Bruckner singled out for special reverence. Both made in his 90s, his recordings with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra of Schubert’s Eighth and Ninth Symphonies (2022) and Brahms’s Second Symphony (2021) were described as ‘perfect performances’ and ‘fresh, lithe and generous’ in, respectively, BBC Music Magazine and The Observer.
Though born to Swedish parents in Springfield, Massachusetts, US on 11 July 1927, Blomstedt grew up in Sweden and Finland, going on to study at the Stockholm Royal College of Music, followed by further studies across Europe and the US, including with Leonard Bernstein. Winning the prestigious Koussevitsky Conducting Prize in 1953 heralded a succession of orchestral chief conductor posts, beginning with the Norrköping Symphony in his native Sweden in 1954 and going to include the Oslo Philharmonic, Danish Radio, Swedish Radio and Staatskapelle Dresden. From 1985-95, he was music director of the San Francisco Symphony and then, from 1998-2005, principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus, forming very close bonds with both ensembles that would carry on right until the end of his life.
A brilliantly lively and magnetic character on the podium even in his later years, Blomstedt was also much admired for the warmth of his character and sheer enthusiasm for sharing his love of music. Speaking recently to BBC Music Magazine, the Finnish-American conductor Aku Sorensen shared how, as a violinist in the San Francisco Youth Orchestra and later as a student at the Sibelius Academy, he had benefited first hand from Blomstedt’s guidance, describing how, in both instances, the Swede’s ‘passion and joy for what he did was infectious’ for generations of younger musicians.
