Leif Segerstam, the colorful Finnish conductor and composer, passed away last Wednesday following a brief illness. He was 80.
Eccentric and larger-than-life, with an exuberant podium demeanor resembling Santa Claus, Segerstam embraced music with a childlike enthusiasm. He served as chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra from 1995 to 2007, and later held the title of Chief Conductor Emeritus with the orchestra. He held similar positions with the Danish National Radio Symphony and the Austrian Radio Symphony. As a guest conductor, he appeared around the world, and developed close, lasting relationships with ensembles such as the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Comments Segerstam made during rehearsals, such as a direction to “Keep the fermata of the rest interesting,” were so quirky and memorable that a list of quotes was compiled. In one memorable performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, he launched into ad lib Viking shouts. Record producer Robert von Bahr described Segerstam as “a completely unique person” with a passion for food and life. He writes,
He was a totally unique figure, and possibly the most talented musician I have ever met – pianist, violinist, composer, conductor, recorder player, tenor. He won the most prestigious piano and violin competitions in Finland – with 2 weeks in between…Wake him up in the middle of the night and ask him to tap out metronome marking 88 – he did it. Could read any score like today’s newspaper. He jumped in for Aho’s flute concerto (with Sharon Bezaly) at a moment’s notice and just conducted the immensely intricate score with meter changes every second bar like it was nothing…Legendary for his comments – when a musician, playing a repeated figure in one of his symphonies, asked how many repetitions he should play, Leif answered: “until I look at you stoppingly”. The world is poorer without him. Much poorer. I miss him!
Segerstam composed more than 370 symphonies. Built on aleatoric techniques, many of these works do not require a conductor, and unfold in expansive blocks of sound which evoke the natural world.
Sibelius: Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82
Segerstam was a noted interpreter of the music of Jean Sibelius. This performance of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony with the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra was recorded in November of 2015:
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C minor
This performance from 2016 features Spain’s Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia:
Rautavaara: “On the Last Frontier”
Segerstam championed the music of fellow Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016). Composed in 1997, Rautavaara’s On the Last Frontier is a fantasy for orchestra and chorus, based on the final paragraphs of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Leif Segerstam led the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and the Finnish Philharmonic Chorus in the work’s world premiere:
Segerstam: Symphony No. 344, “Saluting a royal soul…”, bordercrossingly….
One of Segerstam’s final symphonies, composed in 2021, was recorded by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and led by the composer:
Music is not that which sounds. Music is why that which sounds sounds like it sounds when it sounds…
-Leif Segerstam