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.
Read More: At 97, This Conductor Is Modest and Extraordinary
