We’re all used to rock musicians performing in their 70s and 80s now – something that would have been unthinkable just a few decades back. But can you envisage the hardy veterans of the 1960s – the Stones, McCartney et al - still on stage at, say, the age of 97?
Well, the veteran conductor Herbert Blomstedt (who turned 97 last summer) took to the stage at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco last week and led the orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony through a sequence of symphonies by Schubert and Brahms. Blomstedt didn’t stand up mind you, but was plonked in a padded seat where all the musicians were able to see him conduct proceedings.
What made it all the more remarkable is that Blomstedt’s long career appeared to be over after he suffered two falls in 2022 and 2023, the first of which left him hospitalized. Many assumed that that was that. But Blomstedt is evidently made of tougher material than the rest of us. “Retirement is not a question of age,” he has said. “It should be flexible. I just love the music so much that I just can’t give up. There are always things that I want to learn. I’m never satisfied. I’m happy for the results we get now and then, but I’m not really satisfied. Satisfaction lies in the hope of even better possibilities in the future, and I want to take all those chances.”
Blomstedt took up his first position as conductor with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in 1954 – over seventy years ago; a teenager called Elvis Presley had just released his first single That’s All Right and Winston Churchill was British Prime Minister. He’s by far the oldest living conductor and has a claim to be one of the oldest working musicians in the world.
He’s an opinionated soul too. In a 2007 talk he gave at Andrews University in Michigan, when he was a mere slip of a lad at 80, Blomstedt revealed that he isn’t a fan of pop and rock: “The abyss between sacred and secular has never been greater than today,” he railed. “Those who do not smell the stench of the rotten pop culture already have it in their own nostrils. Today’s rock music is the very opposite of spiritual music. It is music that kills the spirit.”
And though the phrase would doubtless set his nonagenarian teeth on edge, there’s only one word you can say to any musician still performing at 97: respect.
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