Herbert Blomstedt, the acclaimed conductor who led the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995 and held prominent posts with orchestras across Scandinavia and Germany, died Wednesday at 99. His career spanned more than 70 years.
Blomstedt died at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden, his management agency, KünstlerSekretariat am Gasteig, confirmed.
His last appearance came May 15 with the San Francisco Symphony at Davies Hall. Arriving onstage in a wheelchair, he conducted Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, though the performance was interrupted for several minutes during its third movement.
The orchestra replaced him for the next two days of concerts, and he later withdrew from all of his remaining scheduled appearances this year.
“An extraordinary role model,” Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck said. “One of the greatest conductors and a beacon of humanity.”
Blomstedt had been booked to conduct through 2027, including a performance with the Vienna Philharmonic next June, only weeks before his 100th birthday.
“Until the very end, we had hoped to celebrate his 100th birthday with a concert together,” Vienna Philharmonic chairman Daniel Froschauer said.
A Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt did not conduct rehearsals from Friday evening through Saturday in observance of the Sabbath. He did, however, perform concerts on those days, saying he viewed himself as a preacher whose message was music.
“Every bar, every note is shared by us, and it’s a very intense communication,” he said in an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning” that aired last year. “It’s like intense sex.”
He received Grammy Awards for his recordings with the San Francisco Symphony: Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” in 1993 and Johannes Brahms’ “Ein Deutsches Requiem” in 1996.
“My mission is to bring good music to as many people as possible,” Blomstedt said in a 2020 interview published on the DW Music YouTube channel. “It makes you think differently. You get a keener feeling for proportions and beauty.”
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His early leadership roles included principal conductor of Sweden’s Norrköping Symphony Orchestra from 1954 to 1963, music director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 1962 to 1968, and principal conductor of the Danish Radio Symphony from 1967 to 1977. He later led the Swedish Radio Symphony from 1977 to 1982 before serving as chief conductor of Germany’s Staatskapelle Dresden and Semperoper from 1975 to 1985.
“It’s almost like turning on an electrical switch for me,” he said. “When I hear the sound, it transforms me. I’m in heaven.”
Esa-Pekka Salonen, who headed the San Francisco Symphony from 2020 to 2025, recalled in a 2021 interview with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra asking Blomstedt how he managed to convey such joy to the musicians he led.
“I refuse to have any stress,” Salonen remembered Blomstedt replying. “I only do things I absolutely love. I only conduct music that matters to me, and I only work with people I like and, in some cases, love.”
After his San Francisco tenure, Blomstedt became principal conductor of Hamburg’s NDR Symphony Orchestra from 1996 to 1998 and music director of Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1998 to 2005.
Blomstedt was born to Swedish parents in Springfield, Massachusetts, on July 11, 1927.
His family returned to Sweden in 1929. He studied at Stockholm’s Royal Academy of Music and Uppsala University, later working with Igor Markevitch and Jean Morel at The Juilliard School.
As his Juilliard scholarship neared its end, Blomstedt went unannounced to Leonard Bernstein’s apartment at The Osborne, across from Carnegie Hall. He rang the bell and left about 30 minutes later with a scholarship to study under Bernstein at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Although Blomstedt admired Bernstein’s musicianship, he was less taken with the conductor’s famously animated gestures on the podium.
Blomstedt won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize in 1953, made his professional debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 1954 and captured the Salzburg Conducting Competition in 1955.
He married Waltraud Petersen in 1955. She died in 2003. Blomstedt is survived by four daughters and seven grandchildren.