Herbert Blomstedt Conducts Schubert

Herbert Blomstedt is Sweden’s most internationally renowned conductor – ever. Among the orchestras he has worked with are the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris and, not least, the San Francisco Symphony – where he served as Chief Conductor for ten years. Blomstedt has also conducted the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra on well over 200 occasions, and in connection with his 90th birthday in 2017, Konserthuset Stockholm named its main conductor’s dressing room in his honour.

As he now returns for a much-anticipated visit with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the programme features symphonies by Schubert. Blomstedt has spoken of how Schubert’s symphonies constantly move between song-like simplicity and the deepest seriousness, where each phrase must be allowed to breathe and carry its own meaning.

We hear this in the Third Symphony, which Schubert wrote before he had even turned eighteen. Despite his youth, the work already reveals the melodic inventiveness that would become his hallmark, as well as an infectious vitality rooted in the Viennese Classical tradition.

The Eighth Symphony, the Unfinished, is his most famous – but also his most enigmatic. Only two movements were completed, yet within them lies a vast musical universe. From the dark, pulsating opening of the first movement to the quiet, lyrical intensity of the second, the music moves between shadow and light with a power that is without equal.