Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony from 1985-95 and led orchestras in Scandinavia and Germany during a career spanning more than seven decades, died Wednesday. He was 99.
Blomstedt died at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden, according to his governing body, KünstlerSekretariat am Gasteig.
His last performance was on May 15 with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall, when he entered the stage in a wheelchair and struggled to get through Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which stopped for several minutes during the third movement. It was replaced with concerts the next two days and canceled future scheduled shows this year.
“He’s a great example,” said Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck. “One of the greatest leaders and beacons of humanity.”
Blomstedt had concerts scheduled in 2027, including with the Vienna Philharmonic next June, just shy of what would have been her 100th birthday.
“Until the end, we had hoped to celebrate his 100th birthday with a concert together,” said Vienna Philharmonic president Daniel Froschauer.
Blomstedt was a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to do rehearsals on Friday and Saturday nights because of the Sabbath but would lead shows on those days because he saw himself as a musical preacher.
“Every bar, every note is shared with us, and it’s a very intense dialogue,” he said of his direction in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that aired last year. “It’s like intense sex.”
He won Grammy Awards for recordings with the San Francisco Symphony of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” in 1993 and of Johannes Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem” in 1996.
“My mission is to bring good music to as many people as possible,” he said in an interview posted in 2020 by YouTube channel DW Music. “It makes you think differently. It gives you a more aspirational feeling for dimensions and beauty.”
Blomstedt was principal conductor of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden from 1954–63, music director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 1962–68, principal conductor of the Danish Radio Symphony from 1967–77 and the Swedish Radio Symphony from 1977–82 and then Staatskeler became conductor of Germany. 1975-85.
“Almost like flipping an electric switch for me,” he said. “When I hear the sound, it changes me. I’m in heaven.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who conducted the San Francisco Symphony from 2020-25, said in an interview with the London Philharmonia Orchestra in 2021 that he asked Blomstedt how he was filled with joy that the orchestra responded.
“I refuse to be under any pressure,” Salonen recalled Blomstedt telling him. “I only do what I love. I only make music that is important to me and I only work with people I like and in some cases love.”
After leaving San Francisco, Blomstedt was principal conductor of the NDR Hamburg Symphony Orchestra from 1996-98 and music director of the Leipzig Gewanhaus Orchestra from 1998-2005.
He was born to Swedish parents in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 11, 1927.
His family moved back to Sweden in 1929 and he attended the Royal Stockholm Academy of Music and Uppsala University. He studied under Igor Markevitch, then with Jean Morel at the Juilliard School.
When his scholarship at Juilliard was about to expire, he showed up unannounced at Leonard Bernstein’s Osborne apartment across from Carnegie Hall, rang the doorbell and left half an hour later with a scholarship to study with Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Blomstedt was impressed by Bernstein’s music but disliked his elegant podium manners.
Blomstedt won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953, made his professional debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 1954 and won the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955.
He married his wife, the former Waltraud Petersen, in 1955, and she died in 2003. He is survived by four daughters and seven grandchildren.