Herbert Blomstedt is known as a Swedish musician, but Massachusetts likes to claim the maestro as our own. He was born here in Springfield before his parents, both musicians, brought him home to their native country to raise him there.
Blomstedt, now 97 years old, has had a long musical career — and he has not slowed down as he’s aged. You can catch the brilliant artist conducting Brahms’ First Symphony this Thursday, Friday and Saturday with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
He joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss his love of music and more. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Arun Rath: You performed the Brahms Symphony so many times with so many orchestras. I’m curious, after so many performances, how do you make the music like we hear in this recording sound so fresh and new?
Herbert Blomstedt: Every time I start studying it from scratch as if I didn’t know it. That makes it new. So every performance is as if it was a new piece.
Rath: That’s fantastic. And when you’re starting from scratch, do you still find surprises in Brahms or Schubert?
Blomstedt: Yes. This score is so incredibly rich. It’s impossible to find everything at once. It takes more than 97 years to get to the bottom of this piece. I do it with the greatest respect every time. And I’m carried away with richness of thought, the warmth of the thought that is there.
Rath: Speaking of Brahms — first, there’s so much in there. It’s kind of overwhelming.
Blomstedt: I discover new things over time, and it makes me cry. Obviously, the beauty of all of the ideas presented in this music.
Rath: When you’re actually performing it — I’m curious because, you know, I have that listener response, with a hair standing up on the back of my head when I’m listening to this music. You have so much that you’re having to think about when you’re conducting it. Do you still feel it as a spiritual exercise?
Blomstedt: Well, in the actual performance, of course, very nerve is occupied with this music. When we listen to it, it transforms us. And that is perhaps the best way to describe our experience with this music. We are not the same after this performance as before. It’s a profound experience meeting another artist of the grandeur of Johannes Brahms, a very modest man, a real giant in the era of music. We are totally, totally identifying ourselves with the music. Of course, the Boston Symphony Hall is one of the best halls in the world acoustically. It’s a phenomenal place to perform it. The walls reflect the music. Throw it away against us all in the same moment that we utter it, which makes it an experience that it is shocking.
Rath: It’s fascinating. And I’m curious ... because you’ve conducted so many orchestras around the world, what’s special about the BSO, about these players when you’re coming to work with them?
Blomstedt: Well, the history of the orchestra is a wonderful saga of beauty. We had very illustrious leaders. And I sat in as a student in 1952 in many of the rehearsals — frankly every day. I was sitting in the symphony hall and listening to rehearsals, and I was dumbfounded of the intensity of playing.
Rath: Can you give us some more about your background in Boston? I understand you have deep roots here.
Blomstedt: I grew up partly with you in Boston. I studied in Boston in 1952 [at] the New England Conservatory of Music. I even conducted the Conservatory Orchestra. One of my first appearances in America was with that orchestra. So I have many, many roots, many shows.
Rath: It’s nice to hear the love for Boston. And you also have the associated with Tanglewood as well, of course. Right?
Blomstedt: Well, I have a scholarship for study in America, 1952, '53, a whole year. And, well, the year was passed. I heard about the Tanglewood experience, and I took the chance to go up to Leonard Bernstein, who lived in the 57th Street in New York at that time. I was very shy, young man, but I actually I have to meet him and say I want to go to Tanglewood. And he was a wonderful supporter of young people and I walked away with a visit or in his home half an hour later with a scholarship pay for Robert Byrd, you know, in this one season.
Rath: My Lord. I get chills hearing that story. That’s amazing.
Blomstedt: Well miracles happen every day when you’re prepared for them. To my months in in Boston, a great experience. Run with the concert or the long awaited Conservatory of Music was also played in the radio. And I remember a critique in The Boston Globe that was very fine. They said, “We think this young man certainly has a future with a baton.” So that was a good start. And the road since then have been a wonderful road of miracles.
Rath: You conduct without a baton now, right?
Blomstedt: Yes. The last ten years I mostly conducted without the baton. The orchestra that I conduct don’t need the time beater. They need a musician that they can communicate with who are listening and watching. I do that with my hands. A stick is really like a little bit of a sword. Or you can correct people with beating somebody. That’s not my style. I try to express the music through my eyes looking at my my fellow musicians and communicate with them every second.
In the beginning of my career, of course, every every performance, it was a breakthrough. It was a first for myself and it was a part of a path of development that started some 80 years ago. And it is continuing today. I love to explain and try to convey the enthusiasms of listening and performing the work when we actually do it, but it’s like as if we are doing the conversation for the first time. It takes a whole lifetime to learn to listen also to the music.
