Herbert Blomstedt

Born in Massachusetts on July 11, 1927, Herbert Blomstedt is an acclaimed Swedish conductor. Born to Swedish parents, the couple decided to move back to their home country when he was two years old. He studied conducting at the Stockholm Royal College of Music and the University of Uppsala as well as studying baroque music at the Chola Cantorum Basiliensis. He continued conducting studies with Igor Markevitch, Jean Morel (at Juilliard School in New York City, New York), and with Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center. The winner of the Koussevitsky Conducting Prize (1953) and The Salzburg Conducting Competition (1955), Herbert Blomstedt is best known for his performances that spotlight German and Austrian composers such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, Bruckner, and Hindemith. He is also known for his affinity to Scandinavian composers such as Grieg, Berwald, Nielsen, and Sibelius. He has served as Music Director or Principal Conductor for the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra (1954–1962), the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (1962–1968), the Danish Radio Symphony (1967–1977) and the Swedish Radio Symphony (1977–1982). He was also invited to take the reins of the Staatskapelle in Dresden, where he officiated until 1985. He then led the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra from 1985 to 1995. He conducted the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, Germany from 1996 to 1998, before leading the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany (1996-2005). In 2022, when he conducted and recorded Schubert: Symphonies No. 8 ‘Unfinished’ & 9 ‘The Great’, he was the oldest active conductor. That same year, at the age of 95, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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