Even popes retire these days but, like the Queen, Herbert Blomstedt just goes on and on. The Swedish-American conductor is 94 now, and the joints are visibly stiffer than they were as he enters and leaves the stage, but Blomstedt remains amazingly spry. His control of the Philharmonia Orchestra – using his hands, not a baton – was beyond question, and he conducted the entire evening without once sitting down.
The music-making of elderly conductors can sometimes be either lofty or slow, sometimes both. Neither quality applies to Blomstedt. As with the late Bernard Haitink, his conducting in old age radiates both flow and glow. Blomstedt does not force or underline the music, he releases it. But the attentiveness to pulse, phrasing and dynamics are unflagging. There is something to learn from his handling of every transition in the score.
Maria João Pires proved an ideal partner for Blomstedt’s approach in Mozart’s A major piano concerto K 488 before the interval. This was a communing between likeminded musicians of the old school, with no competing for effect. Themes and ideas were passed back and forth without vanity. Pires’s keyboard touch is a constant reward, and her dialogue with the Philharmonia winds in the adagio was exemplary.
Blomstedt’s handling of Bruckner’s seventh symphony, in the second half of the evening, embodied his unified and unshowy approach. The long lines of the opening movement were allowed to unfurl without sounding portentous. Transitions and climactic passages in the adagio emerged from the whole rather than being highlighted. Tempi were brisk and never allowed to sag, and the reading avoided the twin Brucknerian pitfalls of over-emphasis and undue piety. Book now for his next visit.
