At 94, Herbert Blomstedt believes in taking chances

Herbert Blomstedt just might be the busiest nonagenarian around.

Before the COVID-19 shutdown, the American-born Swedish maestro was conducting 90 concerts a year, which would be a healthy workload for someone several decades younger. This season, he is back to 80, and that total will no doubt grow as the arts return to full force.

Put simply, Blomstedt, 94, who will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in concerts March 10-12, is nowhere ready to retire, at least not yet. “I believe in it,” he said. “But retirement is not a question of age. It should be flexible.”

So while many others his age are taking it easy, Blomstedt is often jetting across the world and doing what he has done for most of his life: mounting orchestral podiums and bringing works by great composers like Beethoven, Grieg and Sibelius to life.

“I just love the music so much that I just can’t give up,” he said. “There are always things that I want to learn. I’m never satisfied. I’m happy for the results we get now and then, but I’m not really satisfied. Satisfaction lies in the hope of even better possibilities in the future, and I want to take all those chances.”

Although Blomstedt has held such major posts as chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and principal conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, he is best known in the United States as music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 through 1995.

He helped boost the standing of that already fine orchestra through international tours and award-winning recordings. The maestro first led that ensemble in 1984, and he regularly returns as conductor laureate. “It’s been a very long relationship,” he said. “So I know them very well, and I love them. It’s a great orchestra.”

Although he might not have the star power of, say, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti or Simon Rattle, Blomstedt is much respected within the classical music world. The list of the dozen or so top orchestras he regularly conducts, including the Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic and London Philharmonia, makes that clear. “They invite me and I cannot say no,” he said. “They are all my friends, and they seem like family, because I see them every year.”

A further token of Blomstedt’s standing came in December, when Alex Ross, music critic for the New Yorker, named the conductor “The Rest Is Noise Person of the Year,” an honor named after Ross’ blog. “The esteem in which orchestras and audiences now hold Blomstedt is a belated reward for a resolutely unshowy musician who has gone about his business decade after decade,” Ross wrote. “What he offers, above all, is a kind of preternatural rightness: no gesture feels out of place, no gesture feels routine.”

It also doesn’t hurt that Blomstedt possesses an easy laugh and exudes a gentle air of humility — qualities that put him at odds with outsized personalities in the profession and bombastic conductor stereotypes of the past.

Continuing an American tour that has included concerts with the San Francisco Symphony and New York Philharmonic, Blomstedt returns to the CSO, which also makes his list of regular orchestral collaborators. He will lead a program featuring the Symphony No. 4 (Romantic), a work by a composer for which he is particularly associated: Anton Bruckner (1824-1896).

“For me, they represent a very special kind of music,” he said of Bruckner’s nine numbered symphonies. “No other music than Bruckner, I feel, has a horizon that extends to eternity some place without being religious. It is written by a religious man, but it is not religious music. He never quotes a chorale tune from the Catholic liturgy, for instance. His ideal was Beethoven. It’s absolute music. And the nine symphonies make him the greatest symphonist after Beethoven.”

Although Blomstedt acknowledges that even some very fine musicians have disliked Bruckner’s music, he is convinced that the composer’s creations have been more needed than ever during the darkness and isolation of the coronavirus pandemic. The symphonies supply hope if the listener is open to them. He quotes Swiss musicologist Ernst Kurth, who in 1925 wrote an important Bruckner biography, as saying, “Bruckner’s time will come when there is no other way out.”

The first time Blomstedt guest-conducted the CSO in 1988, the music director was Georg Solti, who was known for developing the muscular sound of the orchestra’s brass section. After concluding his program with Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, Blomstedt shook hands with some of the musicians as they were exiting the stage. Among them was Adolph “Bud” Herseth, who served as principal trumpet from 1948 through 2001 and was one of the CSO’s most famous members.

“That was as fine as snuff,” Herseth said to Blomstedt about the interpretation and the delicate dynamics that the conductor had drawn from the orchestra, making it clear it could play softly just as well as loudly. “They can do anything you inspired them to do,” he said.

Opening the March program is Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 in G Major, K. 453, with Martin Helmchen as soloist. Blomstedt points out that the work was written as part of a group of six such works in the form that Mozart composed in 1784. “It’s unbelievable how different they are,” he said, “and what a wonderful quality they have.”

In all, Mozart wrote 27 piano concertos, which are considered among his most important and influential creations. “Generally speaking, his piano concertos are even more interesting than his symphonies,” Blomstedt said. “The piano concertos are always like the last word in the genre. The level of perfection and the range of expression are unbelievable. Therefore, I find it [No. 17] is a good balance to the huge Bruckner symphony afterward. It’s only about half the time in minutes, but it’s equally great as a work.”

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