Herbert Blomstedt (1927 – 2026)

Alte Oper Frankfurt pays tribute to Herbert Blomstedt, who has died aged 99

An extraordinarily long and rich musical life has come to an end: conductor Herbert Blomstedt died yesterday at the age of 99. The music world has lost an artist who was at once charismatic and modest, a defining influence on musical interpretation yet entirely unassuming, and who spent more than 70 years conducting the world's leading orchestras. Born in the United States in 1927 to Swedish parents and raised in Stockholm, Blomstedt became one of the foremost champions of the German orchestral tradition. “Even as a schoolboy, during the Second World War, I already regarded the German orchestral world as the ideal,” he once said. Among other posts, he served as chief conductor of Germany's two oldest orchestras: the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Herbert Blomstedt made his debut at the Alte Oper Frankfurt with the Staatskapelle Dresden in October 1982, just over a year after the concert hall had reopened. Over the course of his 20 appearances at the Alte Oper, he also conducted the San Francisco Symphony, the Bamberg Symphony, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

His programmes frequently featured works by Mozart and Bruckner, two central figures in the extensive repertoire of this exceptional orchestral conductor. Mozart, Blomstedt once remarked, “is certainly among the most difficult composers there are. Simply because of the balance one has to achieve. People say his music is easy for children – but enormously difficult for everyone older.”

Most recently, the grand seigneur of his profession appeared at our concert hall in autumn 2021, conducting the Bamberg Symphony as its honorary conductor. The programme included Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which, as the Frankfurter Rundschau wrote at the time, was performed “at a brisk tempo, with the finale displaying the finest élan terrible and éclat triomphale”. “One might sooner have expected such a performance from a conductor considerably younger.”

The Alte Oper will always hold in the highest esteem the memory of this great musician and warm-hearted human being, who died on 4 November surrounded by his family at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden.