Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony from 1985-95 and led orchestras in Scandinavia and Germany during a seven-decade career, died Wednesday. He is 99 years old.
Blomstedt died at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden, according to his governing body Künstler Sekretariat am Gasteig.
In his final performance with the San Francisco Symphony at Davis Hall on May 15, he took the stage in a wheelchair and trudged through Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which paused for several minutes in the third movement.
He was substituted for concerts over the next two days and canceled scheduled performances for this year.
“An extraordinary role model,” said Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. “One of the greatest conductors and a beacon of humanity.”
Blomstedt’s performance program runs until 2027, including a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic next June, just shy of his 100th birthday.
“Until the end, we wanted to give a concert together to celebrate his 100th birthday,” said Daniel Froschauer, chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic.
Blomstedt, a Seventh-day Adventist, refused to rehearse on Friday nights and Saturdays because of the Sabbath but would lead performances on those days because he considered himself a musical evangelist.
“Every bar, every note is something we share, and it’s a very intense communication,” he said of his conducting in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning last year. “It’s like intense sex.”
In 1993, his recordings with the San Francisco Symphony of Carl Orff’s “Carana Burana” and Johannes Brahms’s “Deutsche Requiem” won Grammy Awards in 1996 and 1996 respectively.
“My mission is to bring good music to as many people as possible,” he said in an interview posted on the DW Music YouTube channel in 2020. “It makes you think in a different way. You get a sharper sense of proportion and beauty.”
Blomstedt was chief conductor of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden from 1954-63, music director of the Oslo Philharmonic in 1962-68, chief conductor of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1967-77, chief conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1977-82, and then chief conductor of the Staatsorchester Dresden and Semperoper in Germany from 195-85-85.
“It’s almost like turning on a power switch for me,” he added. “When I heard that sound, it changed me. I was in heaven.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who led the San Francisco Symphony from 2020-25, said in a 2021 interview with the London Philharmonic that he asked Blomstedt how joyful he felt at the orchestra’s response.
“I refuse to take any pressure,” Salonen recalled Blomstedt telling him. “I only do things that I absolutely love. I only conduct music that’s important to me, and I only work with people I like, and sometimes even love.”
After leaving San Francisco, Blomstedt served as chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg from 1996-98 and as music director of the Gewanhaus Orchestra in Leipzig from 1998-2005.
Born on July 11, 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Swedish parents.
In 1929, his family moved back to Sweden, and he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm and Uppsala University. He studied under Igor Markevitch and then at the Juilliard School with Jean Morel.
When his scholarship at Juilliard was about to expire, he showed up unscheduled at Leonard Bernstein’s Osborne apartment across from Carnegie Hall, rang the doorbell, and left half an hour later with the scholarship to study with Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Blomstedt was impressed by Bernstein’s musical talent but disliked his exaggerated demeanor on the podium.
Blomstedt received the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953, made his debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 1954, and won the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955.
He married his wife (née Waltraud Petersen) in 1955; she died in 2003. He is survived by four daughters and seven grandchildren.