If you’ve been reading news about the U.S. presidential election, you might be forgiven for thinking that age has something to do with ability.
But it doesn’t work that way in classical music, a field in which artists often go on as long as they can. Conductors tend to retire only when they decide it’s time. And Herbert Blomstedt, who recently turned 97, clearly doesn’t want to just yet.
The oldest major conductor still keeping a regular performance schedule, he was forced to take a break after a fall in December, but was back onstage by the spring and, this week, conducted the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival in Austria. Hardly pushed aside because of his age, he was at the podium of one of the world’s greatest orchestras, at one of classical music’s most prestigious events.
Blomstedt has garnered a lot of attention for his longevity and vitality, but that is just one aspect of what makes him a remarkable conductor. As the critic Alex Ross wrote when Blomstedt was 94, equating age with wisdom is a dubious belief, and what he enjoys now is “a belated reward for a resolutely unshowy musician who has gone about his business decade after decade.”
Even Blomstedt doesn’t spend too much time making sense of his age in interviews. He values routine, and cooks for himself when he’s not on the road. And he has mentioned that, as a Seventh-day Adventist, he doesn’t eat meat or drink alcohol or coffee; without missing a beat, though, he often adds that Winston Churchill made it to 90 liberally drinking and smoking cigars.
Wisdom may not be a given with Blomstedt’s age, but it’s undeniable in his artistry. Perhaps because of physical limitations or personal preferences, or both, his conducting in recent years has had the kind of economy that comes with experience. (You can hear it, too, on the recordings he continues to release, with ensembles including the Philharmonic and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.) He is also a maestro with roots in musicology, who thrills at returning to scores; he has mentioned that it took 66 years to notice a detail in Schubert’s “Great” Symphony for the first time.
Of course, age has an effect on repertoire. Blomstedt isn’t touring the world to conduct new productions of Wagner’s four-opera “Ring” or Strauss’s exhausting “Elektra.” Still, his program with the Philharmonic was meaty fare: Brahms’s “Schicksalslied” (“Song of Fate”) and Mendelssohn’s “Lobgesang” (“Hymn of Praise”), two large-scale, choral works clocking in at 90 minutes without a break.
He walked onto the stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus arm-in-arm with the evening’s concertmaster, Rainer Honeck, greeted by a roaring ovation as he took his seat at a piano bench on the conductor’s podium.
Blomstedt, the tails of his tuxedo jacket draped over the bench, and his head tilted a little to the left, conducted with his hands. He kept a steady beat that matched the orchestra and members of the Wiener Singverein as he sculpted large phrases with patience and the occasional blooming gesture. The beginning of Brahms’s score flowed serenely, but when it picked up in the middle Allegro section, Blomstedt’s movement became more angular rather than acrobatic; intensity comes in many shapes.
In Mendelssohn’s hourlong symphonic cantata, Blomstedt was a conductor in full control of the work’s shifting, immense scale. The purely instrumental Sinfonia was brisk and taut, as the best of Mendelssohn’s music should be to reflect its affection for Bach. But the “Lobgesang” also resembles Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, by following three orchestral movements with a choral finish, and in those sections, Blomstedt was at his most sensitive.
He was, above all, a master of balance, bringing the Philharmonic in and out of focus as it supported the three vocal soloists: the sopranos Christina Landshamer and Elsa Benoit, and the tenor Tilman Lichdi. With cool confidence, Blomstedt reserved climactic bursts for effect, only to quickly release them and let the music settle into a kind of holy stillness.
And, where a conductor might take on an affected grandeur in the finale, Blomstedt seemed to simply trust the performance to blossom majestically on its own, as a logical, earned end point of all that came before. After he lowered his arms, to cheers in the audience, he didn’t turn to soak in their praise; he applauded the musicians.
Blomstedt didn’t actually face the audience until he left the stage and returned for a proper bow. He smiled slightly, then excused the orchestra. After an evening in service of music more than himself, he left without a sense of special occasion, as if to say: Don’t make a big deal about all this. I’ll be back.
The post At 97, This Conductor Is Modest and Extraordinary appeared first on New York Times.