Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995 and conducted orchestras across Scandinavia and Germany over a seven-decade career, died Wednesday at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden. He was 99. His death was confirmed by his management agency, KünstlerSekretariat am Gasteig.
Blomstedt’s final performance came on May 15 with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall. He entered the stage in a wheelchair and struggled through Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, which paused for several minutes during the third movement. He was replaced for the following two nights’ concerts and later canceled his remaining scheduled appearances for the year.
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck called him “an extraordinary role model,” adding that he was “one of the greatest conductors and a beacon of humanity.”
Blomstedt had engagements booked into 2027, including a planned appearance with the Vienna Philharmonic next June, shortly before what would have been his 100th birthday. “Until the very end, we had hoped to celebrate his 100th birthday with a concert together,” said Vienna Philharmonic chairman Daniel Froschauer.
A Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt would not hold rehearsals on Friday nights or Saturdays out of respect for the Sabbath, but he would conduct performances on those days, regarding himself as a kind of preacher through music. “Every bar, every note is shared by us, and it’s a very intense communication,” he told “CBS Sunday Morning” in an interview broadcast last year. “It’s like intense sex.”
With the San Francisco Symphony, Blomstedt won Grammy Awards for recordings of Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” in 1993 and Johannes Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem” in 1996. “My mission is to bring good music to as many people as possible,” he said in a 2020 interview posted by the DW Music YouTube channel. “It makes you think differently. You gave a more keen feeling for proportions and beauty.”
A career spanning Europe
Before his decade in San Francisco, Blomstedt built a long career across European podiums. He was principal conductor of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden from 1954 to 1963, music director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 1962 to 1968, principal conductor of the Danish Radio Symphony from 1967 to 1977, and then of the Swedish Radio Symphony from 1977 to 1982. He went on to serve as chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and Semperoper in Germany from 1975 to 1985.
“Almost like turning an electrical switch for me,” he said of conducting. “When I hear the sound, it transforms me. I’m in heaven.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who led the San Francisco Symphony from 2020 to 2025, recalled asking Blomstedt about the joy his orchestras seemed to draw from him, during a 2021 interview with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra. Salonen said Blomstedt told him: “I refuse to have any stress. I only do things I absolutely love. I only conduct music that matters to me and I only work with people that I like and in some cases love.”
After leaving San Francisco, Blomstedt served as principal conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 1998 and as music director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1998 to 2005.
From Massachusetts to Juilliard
Blomstedt was born to Swedish parents in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 11, 1927. His family returned to Sweden in 1929, and he went on to study at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Music and Uppsala University. He trained under Igor Markevitch and later with Jean Morel at The Juilliard School.
As his scholarship at Juilliard was about to run out, Blomstedt showed up unannounced at Leonard Bernstein’s apartment at The Osborne, across from Carnegie Hall, rang the doorbell, and left a half-hour later with a scholarship to study under Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. He admired Bernstein’s musicianship but was less fond of his flamboyant style on the podium.
Blomstedt won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953, made his professional debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 1954, and took the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955. He married Waltraud Petersen in 1955; she died in 2003. He is survived by four daughters and seven grandchildren.
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