Herbert Blomstedt (1927 -2026)

With some other notes from an, er, eventful week

Herbert B. rehearsing in Leipzig, 1998  (photo: Eckehard Schulz/AP)

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
iii. Adagio molto e cantabile


[16:16] Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Berlin Classics (Deutsche Schallplatten), recorded in the Lukaskirche, Apr. 1979 & Mar. 1980

R. STRAUSS: Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche
(Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks), Op. 28


[14:50] Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, February 5-9, 1989

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 7 in E: ii. Adagio - Sehr feierlich
und sehr langsam (Very solemn and very slow)


[24:33] Staatskapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, June 30-July 3, 1980

Mightn't one get the idea -- from these samplings as well as the likes of Rudolf Kempe's 1970-76 EMI-Deutsche Schallplatten series (14 LPs' or 9 CDs' worth) of Richard Strauss's orchestral works, not to mention the 1968 complete Ariadne auf Naxos, and Kurt San­der­ling's 1971-72 Eurodisc-Deutsche Schallplatten Brahms symphony cycle -- that the Dres­den State Orchestra was one of the world's greatest? It sure could be! Till Eulen­spiegel, for example, isn't a hard piece to make work, but it's a tricky one to play really well. Note how fully Blomstedt and the Dresd­ners characterize each musical moment -- and that's some mighty spiffy, purposeful horn-playing. In the Bruckner in particular, the strings positively glow. -- Ed.

by Ken

An eventful week, indeed. As you may have heard, on Wednesday the Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt, who has been a frequent presence in Sunday Classics from the outset, perhaps most inescapably for the 1980 Dresden recording of Bruckner 7 from which we've just heard once again the ineffably beautiful Adagio, died. (We're going to hear more of the symphony, but not today.)

It's hard to sob uncontrollably about Maestro B.'s life and life's work being cruelly cut short. He lived almost four months after his 99th birthday, and he remained active till pretty close to the end. We're going to hear him described as "modest" and "unassuming," and these seem to me on the nose. Throughout his career -- and even more in those golden years -- orchestras seemed to love playing for/with him. All the more reason to celebrate his life and work, and we'll get to that. But other stuff happened this week.


WE'RE NOT DONE WITH THE LEGACY OF MAESTRO B. --

Probably tomorrow, we'll be reverting to the obvious plan I formulated upon hearing of the maestro's passing: raiding the Sunday Classics Archive for its store of Blomstedtiana, maybe even with some additions -- and with a merciful minimum of chatter from me.

Even today, we're not done with the maestro --

At the end of this post I've tacked on a "Blomstedt musical bonus" -- a pretty hefty one, comprising some 3½ hours of music stretched end to end. Of course there's no one to stop you from scrolling straight down to the music as I try to regather my jumbled thoughts of yesterday.


NOW, FOR THE NEXT EVENT TO TOSS INTO OUR MIX

This one wasn't an "at large" event. It was just in my little world. Most Saturdays these days I do a writing workshop, and yesterday's writing "prompt" connected for me in weird, implausible ways. It was a pair of photos of Depression-era crowds gathered in fascination with a pair of improbable folk heroes: the still-at-large robbing-and-murdering lovebirds Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, who would be immortalized in Arthur Penn's 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, where the creepy couple was perhaps even more creepily transformed into the ravishing, gotta-love-'em, smoking-hot Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Warren B. also produced the film.

How weird, even creepy, is it to be thinking about Bonnie
and Clyde and Herbert Blomstedt at the same time?

The real Bonnie and Clyde -- are you feeling the heat?

As long as we're talking weird 'n' creepy, it makes me feel both, realizing that Bonnie and Clyde-the-film is 60 (count 'em, 60!) years old. There are likely generations of folks alive who've never heard of Bonnie and Clyde, or of Faye Dunaway or Warren Beatty. These folks will likely be startled to learn from Wikipedia that the film "is considered a turning point for American cinema." It goes without saying that folks who don't know who Faye and Warren are, or rather were, can't begin to imagine the sexual heat their presence in the title roles was intended to generate.

To return to Wikipedia:

Bonnie and Clyde is considered one of the first films of the New Hollywood era and a landmark picture. It broke many cinematic taboos, and for some members of the counterculture, the film was seen as a "rallying cry" against the establishment, both for its portrayal of a bank robbery as a form of revolution and for its sympathetic depiction of criminals contrasted against the police. Its success prompted other filmmakers to be more open in presenting sex and violence in their films. The film's ending became famous as "one of the bloodiest death scenes in cinematic history."

YOU'RE PROBABLY FAMILIAR WITH THE OTHER EVENT

You're likely still not seeing any connection between either the real or the fictional Bonnie 'n' Clyde and our "modest, unassuming" Herbert Blomstedt. You may feel the connection I did to the week's third event. Chronologically, it was actually the first, having occurred the day before the maestro's passing: a certain U.S. election, which wound up enabling a lot of people besides myself to breathe, really breathe, for the first time in 10 or maybe 20 years.
As the three events got jumbled and jangled in my head, I got the idea -- possibly weird, possibly creepy -- of sharing with you a gussied-up version of what I cranked out in that half-hour of writing in yesterday's writing workshop. (Thanks for listening, Team Sasha!)

CRIME DOESN'T PAY. OR MAYBE IT DOES.
I OFTEN FORGET WHICH --

"A modest, unassuming maestro who neither . . . "

A modest, unassuming maestro who "neither" what? Sorry, I can't tell you exactly what the modest, unassuming maestro didn't do. (I can make some guesses, along the lines of "immodest" and "wildly presuming.") The six-words-plus-ellipsis-dots I've quoted above are the full extent of the text I found, credited to the Washington Post, on my search page when I went looking for the exact birth and death dates. I assume they're from the paper's obit -- for the outstanding Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt, who died Wednesday at the age of 99.

I was going to say "Swedish-born." But while he was naturally born Swedish, he was actually born -- as I'd been reminded by my birth-date research -- in Springfield, Mass., right here in the U.S. of A. Much later in life he would have an American decade: 1985-95, when he was music director of the San Francisco Symphony, a good time for both orchestra and conductor. They made a fair number of records in Davies Hall for Decca, the British record company.

Given Herbert B.'s age at the time of his passing, he was likely born in 1927, and indeed he was. The date of birth was July 11, meaning that when he passed, he was not quite four months past his 99th birthday. And he was still conducting till pretty near the end -- when he was able, allowing for his increasing fragility. You could easily enough find exact date(s) for his last performances if you looked through the obits and tributes. I'm not up to it.

"Modest" and "unassuming" as Herbert B. was, he was well established from his early career years, and as the career evolved, he was known and respected. But he didn't become really famous until those amazing golden years. FWIW, YouTube has an interesting assortment of really beautiful, deeply felt performances from those later years.

When I think about Herbert B., probably the first thing I think of is the deeply satisfying recording of the Bruckner Seventh Symphony he made in Dresden in 1980, from which we heard the second movement, the ineffably beautiful Adagio, at the top of this post. He would have been 53 then -- hardly old for a conductor, but who would have imagined that he had 45-plus more years of deeply humane music-making ahead of him?

At the same time, it's certainly appropriate, in reflecting on the election, to be thinking of gangsters who captured the American public's attention and even admiration. Because a gangster is the closest description I can think of for the clear target of the election, who even now denies that it reflects in any way badly on himself. No, what fault there is lies totally with others, including a lot of people who – in the gangster's mind – took all the generosity and loyalty he lavished on them and, the fuckers, betrayed his seraphic self.

Of course he would have had a minuscule reign as a boss of organized crime – not to be confused with his brand of wildly disorganized criminality. His exclusive preoccupation with self-enrichment and screaming self-glorification would have gotten him rubbed out in a matter of days in the unlikely event that he could have survived to become the capo di tutti capi.

At least Bonnie and Clyde seem to have understood that eventually there would be such a thing as accountability for their crimes.

Maybe what I need now is to relisten to that remarkable recording Herbert Blomstedt made of Bruckner 7 at the ripe young age of 53. The symphony, it should be remembered, was composed in part as a memorial to one of our greatest composers, Richard Wagner, and especially in its enormous first two movements it's one of the deepest and broadest tributes I know to the potential of and hope for humanity.

WHEW! YOU WAITED FOR IT (OR MAYBE JUST QUICK-
SCROLLED DOWN) -- HERE'S YOUR "BLOMSTEDT BONUS"

I thought I'd just kind of slip these in. The Beethoven 9 is from a Dresden cycle of the nine Beethoven symphonies. The two Bruckner 4's are: (1) a studio recording from the same period when Denon and Deutsche Schallplatten collaborated on the Blomstedt-Dresden Bruckner 7; (2) the more expansive, perhaps still more beautiful Vienna Phil live performance is from those later years of Maestro B. -- a couple of months before his 90th birthday.

BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125:
i. Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso
ii. Molto vivace [at 16:55]
iii. Adagio molto e cantabile [at 30:42]
iv. Presto [at 47:06] . . . "O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!" [at 53:49]


Helena Doese (s), Marga Schiml (ms), Peter Schreier (t), Theo Adam (bs-b), Leipzig Radio Chorus, Chorus of the Dresden State Opera [in iv.]; Staats­kapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Berlin Classics (Deutsche Schallplatten), recorded in the Lukaskirche, Apr. 1979 & Mar. 1980

BRUCKNER: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat:
i. Bewegt, nicht zu schnell (With movement, not too quick)
ii. Andante quasi allegretto
iii. Scherzo: Bewegt (With movement)
iv. Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (With movement, but not too quick)


[1:06:54; ii. at 18:25, iii. at 34:56; iv. at 45:50] Staats­kapelle Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Denon-Deutsche Schallplatten, recorded in the Lukaskirche, Sept. 7-11, 1981
[1:08:37; ii. at 20:31, iii. at 35:52, iv. at 48:00] Vienna Philharmonic, Herbert Blomstedt, cond. Live performance from the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein, Apr. 30, 2017 (end applause chopped off)


NEXT UP: More Blomstedt goodies from the SC Archive

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