Herbert Blomstedt, former San Francisco Symphony music director, dies at 99

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman reports that conductor Herbert Blomstedt, music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1985 to 1995, died on Wednesday, November 4, at his home in Gothenburg, Sweden, according to his management. He was 99. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1927 to a Swedish father and an American mother, and grew up in Sweden. Before San Francisco he had been music director of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Dresden Staatskapelle. According to the paper, he turned the Symphony into a top-class orchestra through new hires and strict discipline, took it on its first European tour in 14 years in 1987, and pressed for the renovation of Davies Symphony Hall. He later led the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra from 1998 to 2005 and kept returning to San Francisco as conductor laureate. His final concert appearance was a performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Davies Symphony Hall in May. The Symphony's concerts of January 14 to 16, which he had been due to conduct, will be dedicated to his memory. Photo by Eskil Malmberg, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.