One of the Danish musicians who has followed Herbert Blomstedt the longest in the Maestro's 90-year life (his birthday is 11 July) is now retired solo flutist Toke Lund Christiansen. Here he draws a portrait of the honorary conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, based on a rehearsal week fifteen years ago
This week we play Beethoven's Third and Carl Nielsen's Sixth. Seventy-five-year-old Herbert Blomstedt stands on the podium. Are we looking at an old man? On the contrary. On TV yesterday, a Belgian researcher claimed that beer was now the drink to stay youthful and fresh! Last year it was wine, and it seems that schnapps has also had its advocates.
Denying any form of taxed stimulus, including coffee, Blomstedt puts the daily abuse of others into perspective. He seems to have spent a lifetime recharging himself solely through his strong personal commitment. In this humid November week, he performs with energy and poise.
I immediately recognise his superior conducting technique. It has always been like that: down to the smallest detail, he manages to pinpoint an effort, the length of a sustained note, the nuance or the slight accent. It's as if his attention to detail has grown over the years.
The little one Humoresque kit With Nielsen, he almost conducts with the outer joints of his index fingers! On a larger scale, I recognise the special swaying of the body, which, in a large structured form, sets the stage for a culminating point, an explosive discharge. An intellectual orchestra leader who also has the entire emotional register on high voltage. Beethoven's Eroica becomes extremely dramatic with Blomstedt. A document of life. Napoleon on horseback, with a fluttering cape in E flat major, yes, but also a story about the battle that is always, in the end, doomed to be lost. The mourning march, which Wagner could not slow down enough, Blomstedt keeps at a strict tempo: metronome 80! As stated by Beethoven in the famous letter containing metronome numbers for almost all the symphonies.
Blomstedt is forced to give the orchestra the prescribed breaks, but as soon as he has effortlessly, almost sportingly, resumed his place on the podium, he continues the phrase the last rehearsal ended with. The entire rehearsal is thus one continuous process, and it is clear that Blomstedt, despite the fact that we are talking about two repertoire works and an orchestra that plays every note correctly from the first run-through, could use twice the rehearsal time. In other words: We are talking about one of the greats of the podium! A master for whom the years have only added up.
For me, the reunion is moving, and I realise that it's due to a whole web of interconnected reasons. I'm sitting on the woodwind shelf with Jens Boje Hansen, a master piccolo player and my friend and companion for decades. To Nielsen's Sixth the National Edition has delivered new sheet music. Nielsen's thoughts have been purged of contemporary and later improvements, or what you could also call lessons learnt about performance practice. Blomstedt also uses the new edition.
I appreciate the National Edition, but this week I can't bring myself to play it. I have carefully recorded and transferred the changes to our old flute part, the one on which the many times the Nielsen symphony was performed under Herbert Blomstedt's direction were recorded on the back of the score by my colleague from that time, Frantz Lemsser. The first time was in November 1973: recording all six symphonies for EMI.
Blomstedt had been chief conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra for four or five years. The ensemble's quality and self-awareness were not high, but were on a steep rise. For Blomstedt, the recording was a giant step into the ranks of established conductors. For the symphony orchestra, it was the first time since the days of Busch and Malko that they had recorded for the international market. Nerves were on edge, and during the recording process there were incomprehensible nervous breakdowns in many parts of the ensemble. It's hard to understand today, when orchestral recordings are perceived as ’quiet days at Amager” compared to the high-voltage symphonic concerts.
Blomstedt had used his first years with the orchestra to test himself in the repertoire's biggest ”hits” and to secure a core repertoire for the ensemble: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, not to mention Brahms. New music was also given its due.
Music Director Mogens Andersen made no secret of the fact that the Radio Symphony Orchestra should primarily see itself as a station and utility orchestra. The symphonic sound should be favoured, but there should be no illusion of being able to compete with the legendary orchestras in the USA and Central Europe. But Nielsen was Danish, after all. We had to be able to work that out! The recordings were well received, and in the years that followed, the orchestra toured with Blomstedt on the podium, and often there was at least one Nielsen symphony on the programme.
Blomstedt had programmed both the First and Sixth Symphonies for a festival in London. It was a bold move, not least because it was widely believed that Nielsen's central symphonies should be found in the row between the Second and Fifth. Blomstedt realised that Nielsen's First contains some of the qualities we recognise from Brahms, but also radiates something we might dare to call core Danish. In the juxtaposition with the Sixth (modernism, abstraction, composite, seemingly irreconcilable emotions), Blomstedt showed how far the Nielsen imagination extends, and the orchestra also had the opportunity to paint two very different canvases in romantic and garish timbres respectively.
DR Symphony Orchestra in 2017. The orchestra doesn't have many members from back then and certainly none from my early days in the seventies. Is the orchestra better now? Of course, but one day you'll have to lend an ear to Blomstedt's Beethoven symphonies from the mid-seventies.
I visualise the young Blomstedt when he took over as chief conductor. Right from the start, he took the task extremely seriously: ”Mr Fosdal, Mr Hammergaard, Mr Hammergaard. Hammergaard, Mr Hammergaard, Mr Jensen, Mrs Holst-Christensen. Jensen, Mrs Holst-Christensen”. Blomstedt had learnt all the names of the various positions in the orchestra. ”Mr Jensen!” - ”No, Mr Blomstedt. This is Mr Rud. Mr Jensen is ill,” was the reply from the horn section. After many years of absence, he was once again able to show off his phenomenal memory: ”Gert Herzberg”, he suddenly said, and then it was an important place in the 2nd oboe that had to be emphasised. That's a hell of a memory, after having been a conductor in Stockholm, Dresden, San Francisco, Hamburg and Leipzig in the meantime!
It's been more than 50 years since Herbert Blomstedt first conducted our orchestra. It's hard to believe it, but the great, youthful Swedish Maestro is turning 90! The entire orchestra, both those who played and those who play, would like to congratulate him and thank him for the countless concert experiences he has led!
We will next experience the honorary conductor in a pure Mendelssohn programme, which takes me back to a summer day in 1999. I visited Herbert Blomstedt in Leipzig and recorded an interview with him on my small (unreliable!) cassette recorder. It later became a section in my book on ”The Art of Conducting”, View to Music. It made an impression on me at the time that Blomstedt, after having been chief conductor of the world's oldest symphony orchestra in Dresden, with perhaps the world's most expressive string sound, had now taken over the Leipzig Gewandthaus. The quality here was of course also high, but not as high as in Dresden.
In Leipzig he had an artistic task because, as he explained, ”I learnt from the string sound in Dresden, and I have taken that with me wherever I conduct”. Leipzig, on the other hand, was Bach's city, Gade's city and not least Mendelssohn's. As Gewandthaus conductor, Blomstedt also lived in the house where Mendelssohn had also had his official residence. ”They have such an amazing tradition. It was Mendelssohn's orchestra.”.
We will experience Herbert Blomstedt in a youthful and lively repertoire with Mendelssohn at the centre. The Symphony 3, the Scottish Symphony and the 4th, the Italian. That night it will be hard to sit still!