Leif Segerstam, the Finnish conductor and composer, and one of the most colorful characters in classical music, has died at 80.
Best-known outside Scandinavia for his interpretations of his fellow Finns Jean Sibelius and Einojuhani Rautavaara, Segerstam was the longtime conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic and the Royal Opera in Stockholm, and a conducting teacher at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. He also held posts with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and RSO Wien (Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra), and guest conducted throughout Europe and North America.
He composed 371 symphonies, 30 string quartets and 13 concertos for violin (his principal instrument), among other works.
Segerstam, whose physical bulk, flowing mane of hair and bushy white beard led inevitably to comparisons with Santa Claus, was famed for his energetic, at times explosive, conducting style and expansive personality.
He was “completely overwhelming in all ways – weighed almost 35 stones [nearly 500 pounds] at some stage, could eat one each of the whole menu in one sitting (I saw that in Salzburg),” BIS Records chief Robert von Bahr recalls in a note to Norman Lebrecht’s Slipped Disc website. “Perfect pitch down to 1 Hz . . . . Could read any score like today’s newspaper.”
More reminiscences of a singular musical figure:
Musicians share memories of the one-and-only Leif Segerstam
Here’s one of Segerstam’s most famous/notorious music videos, of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” – who knew the last-movement shipwreck had vocal parts? (45 minutes into the video) – with Spain’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia: