Vienna Meets Tokyo 70 Years of Music, Friendship and Tradition

by Georg Predota  November 5th, 2026

In 2026, Japan has two magnificent reasons to celebrate its rich musical and cultural heritage. Tokyo’s magnificent Suntory Hall marks its 40th anniversary, while the Vienna Philharmonic celebrates 70 years since its first visit to Japan.

The connection between the Vienna Philharmonic and Suntory Hall dates back to 1999, when the inaugural “Wiener Philharmoniker Week” in Japan brought the orchestra to this celebrated venue.

These milestones share a deep respect for tradition and a commitment to excellence nurtured through generations of craftsmanship. Both Japanese culture and the Vienna Philharmonic value preserving their artistic heritage and passing on their traditions to future generations.

Vienna Philharmonic Japan Tour 1956  

A Musical Friendship Begins

The Wiener Philharmoniker’s first concerts in Japan took place in 1956, under the baton of composer and conductor Paul Hindemith. This historic visit began a concert tradition, with subsequent tours led by Herbert von Karajan and Karl Böhm, among others.

The first engagement at Suntory Hall took place in 1987, with Claudio Abbado conducting, just months after the hall had opened its doors.

The magnificent Suntory Hall is in Tokyo’s Akasaka district and consists of a main concert hall, widely considered one of the finest in the world for its acoustics. The Main Hall also houses a magnificent organ made by the Austrian firm Rieger Orgelbau, showcasing an incredible 5,898 pipes.

Suntory Hall

A Jewel Box of Sound

The performance complex also includes a smaller hall for chamber music, known as “Blue Rose,” and its roof is an extended, tiered landscape garden. The “Herbert von Karajan” plaza in front of Suntory Hall was created in April 1998 in remembrance of the maestro, who was involved in the hall’s design.

Suntory Hall (2018)

He recommended its vineyard style, in which the audience surrounds the concert floor in the Main Hall, and he helped with its acoustic evaluation. He would later call it “a jewel box of sound.”

Shoichi Sano of Yasui Architects and Engineers handled the architectural design, while Minoru Nagata of Nagata Acoustics provided the acoustic expertise. The latest research also influenced the hall’s acoustic design, as well as the opinions of music lovers.

A Second Home in Tokyo

As a result, all 2,006 seats face the stage, much like terraces of vines oriented toward the sun. This design allows musicians and audiences to feel in perfect harmony and be fully immersed in the musical experience, both acoustically and visually.

Following the 1997 visit to Japan, Suntory Hall and its founder, Keizo Saji, began inviting the orchestra and organising subsequent visits and residencies. Under this arrangement, the first Wiener Philharmoniker Week took place in March 1999, with Riccardo Muti conducting. As the chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic explained, “Suntory is our second home.”

Riccardo Muti (2010)

Friendship Beyond the Stage

The orchestra and Suntory Hall share a particularly close relationship, as they have a common vision. They want to pass on the joy of music to the next generation. In addition to regular concerts during the “Wiener Philharmoniker Week,” they collaborate on special activities that connect performers with audiences, as well as special programmes aimed at young people.

A deep friendship guides the relationship between the Vienna Philharmonic and Suntory Hall. Following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan in March 2011, the “Music Aid Fund” was created. The Vienna Philharmonic immediately pledged one million euros, and Suntory matched the donation with another million.

Orchestra members visited and played in disaster areas such as Sendai, and they also visited schools, where they rehearsed together with the students. In the afternoon, they held master classes, and in the evening, they played concerts together.

The Heart of the Harmony

In 2016, the Wiener Philharmoniker performed a concert together with children from the affected areas at Suntory Hall, titled “The Heart of the Harmony.”

They rehearsed and performed the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and, as one participant reflected, “it was about more than just playing the notes.”

The “Music Aid Fund” has since continued, with further visits to the Sendai Junior Orchestra in 2019 and musical exchanges with students in Rikuzentakata in 2025.

Opening Doors

For 2026, they have also organised several education and outreach events. There is a free open rehearsal on November 8 for students and members of the Suntory Hall Members Club, an instrumental master class with horn player Wolfgang Vladár on November 10, and a school programme for junior high and high school students on November 7.

Ninety youth tickets, for everyone from junior high students to young people aged up to 25, will be available for the concert on November 8. In addition to the four concerts at Suntory Hall, the orchestra will tour Takasaki (Gunma), Nagoya, and Osaka.

Wiener Philharmoniker Week 2026

A Living Tradition

Suntory Hall has four concerts scheduled in 2026, all conducted by Riccardo Muti, who has worked with the orchestra for 55 years. The anniversary programme is rather special, as it brings together two symphonies premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic itself.

Brahms’ Second Symphony was premiered under Hans Richter in 1877, and Bruckner’s monumental Eighth Symphony first sounded under Richter in December 1892.

Both works have become cornerstones of the symphonic repertoire, and hearing the Vienna Philharmonic return to these masterpieces many decades later means reconnecting with an important part of its own history while passing on accumulated insights to a younger generation of listeners.

Interlude looks forward to being part of this special anniversary celebration on 12 November, experiencing firsthand a musical tradition that continues to bring Japan and Vienna together.

In Touch With Unsuk Chin

 by Frances Wilson 

As the 75th Aldeburgh Festival – founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears – gets underway, we spoke to Korean-born composer Unsuk Chin, one of the festival’s Featured Artists.

Unsuk Chin © Priska Ketterer

Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer?

The most formative influences are probably those from childhood when the senses react to everything around them in a more ‘holistic’, immediate approach. Then, there was the time of my studies: immersing myself in European avant-garde music in the early 80s was vital, as I had before that known ‘Western’ musical history only until Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto. Conversely, the experience of studying with Ligeti, who denounced the avant-garde, requested utterly original music of excellent craftsmanship from himself and his students, asking me to throw away my prize-winning works, was a pivotal moment. Indeed, moments of crisis and subsequent attempts to find a way out are essential moments and threshold experiences.

The excellent Danish poet Inger Christensen wrote that the major influences on her work were creative stumbling blocks, irritations that, in the long term, made her question and develop her approach. For me, such a moment was when I worked, in the late 80s, and after a writer’s block of almost three years, for a couple of years at a studio for electroacoustic music. Through this, I could re-evaluate the essential elements of my compositional approach and expand the basis of my music. Another significant experience was, in the 90s, longer stays in Bali, where I studied Gamelan music – the acquaintance of a different tradition of great refinement and quality deeply rooted in the society was a discovery.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?

That was to realise my childhood dream of becoming a professional musician and fighting my way out of difficult circumstances – in the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea was a poor post-war country on the periphery, and it was not easy to start as a female Asian composer in Germany.

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working on a commissioned piece?

Without a commission or deadline, I would never compose a work. One needs much pressure from the external world to get through this crazy process. I don’t have any work in my drawer. Writing a new piece is a very demanding process and can take years. I wouldn’t go for it without external pressure and the adrenaline rush. At the same time, I would never accept a commission with conditions that don’t fit into the musical thoughts and goals I am working with during a specific period.

What are the special challenges and pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles or orchestras?

I always choose very carefully which commissions I accept. One has to prioritise. It almost needs to be a compulsion: if I don’t have an idea what to write for a certain instrument or concept, I won’t do it. For example, I wrote my First Violin Concerto in 2001 and was convinced I would never write another one. But then, when there was a possibility to write for Leonidas Kavakos, I reconsidered, and the work, 20 years later, is very different from the first one.

Of which works are you most proud?

I move on and try to do something new with every piece. I have removed several earlier works from my work list as I am not content with them. As for the remaining ones, I accept them, but there are also pieces to which I feel more emotional distance than others – which is unsurprising when one revisits works from several decades ago. But I can also name a counterexample – my Piano Concerto, which is from 1995 but which wasn’t much performed before the Deutsche Grammophon recording two decades later. This is a work into which I put all the energy and frenzy of my then 34-year-old self – I wouldn’t compose in this manner anymore, but I feel emotionally close to it.   

How would you characterise your compositional language?

I prefer not to, as it may make it more difficult for the listener to approach the work without prejudices. Besides, when I compose a new work, the most important thing for me is its unique shape. Of course, as a composer, you have a particular craft; you prefer certain materials and draw on compositional techniques acquired through the years. You cannot and perhaps shouldn’t avoid that. Nonetheless, it is important for me to attempt each work to be singular in character. Pablo Picasso once expressed it this way: style holds the painter captive in the same point of view, in a technique, in a formula, but he always wants to make something that is new and unknown to himself.  

How do you work?

With pen and paper. Composing is, above all, waiting — days, sometimes weeks, before the empty staves. And then, suddenly, a door opens in the head. With age and experience, one develops trust that this door opens at some point if one tries hard enough. The music is in my head. I sometimes jot down ideas, plan harmonies, etc., but for me personally, it is an abstract process without piano or other devices. It can take several years for thoughts and concepts to mature. And when the pressure is great enough, it’s like giving birth: the thoughts have to come out, then you write.  

What advice would you give to young or aspiring composers?

To think carefully if one really wants to have a life as a professional composer. It is usually a back-breaking and lonely job, and the financial prospects are often non-existent. If one really wants to do it, one should, but one should be aware what price it takes.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?

This is not easy since, nowadays, there is a tendency to think more and more in purely economic and functional categories, on top of which you have to add the quickness of modern mass media. Besides, there exists a mistaken notion that classical music would be something ‘elitist,’ which is why the notion that society should support art forms that only a small minority will engage with has lost traction. All of this does not mean that things were better during other times. However, it is concerning and a scandal that music is often no longer even considered a minor subject in schools due to very obscure claims of competitiveness and economic success – claims often made, for example, by numerous politicians. It is wrong to withhold from children the experience of art, which is one of the things that distinguishes human beings from AI, not to mention that art often provides indispensable solace and a utopia. Anyway, there are also ‘late bloomers’, audiences that can be won over with creative ideas and new approaches even if they won’t have had previous exposure to classical music; after all, the experience of great music can be a deeply emotional one. The methods and approaches used to try to develop classical music’s audiences depend on the place and context. But the main thing, I believe, is trust. Trust in quality, the hard work of serious performers and composers, the slow progress of building audiences and overcoming obstacles, an almost aggressive defence of artists’ quality and hard work, the audience’s right to hear this music, and the need for financial support of the whole musical ecosystem.

What is the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about but you think we should be?

I doubt that such a thing exists as ‘the music industry’ – fortunately, we live in a diverse world. At the same time, of course, certain tendencies exist, but these are intertwined with societal developments. Our times are obsessed with the speed of information, packaging, and the surface, which can be problematic for developing sustainable quality standards. Also, the future of classical music institutions in many places is endangered. That leads often to market-think and occasionally to a winner-takes-it-all mentality. At the same time, fortunately, there are many niches and different initiatives. It was much more polarised in the 50 years after the Second World War: there was the established conservative music world, and then there were the rebellious circles of both the avant-garde and the early-music revival, who not infrequently fractured into warring factions. But every time has its challenges.

What do you enjoy doing most?

How Conductors Explain Conducting

 by Janet Horvath  March 14th, 2025

When audiences are transported by a concert, they imagine that a kind of magic happens onstage attributed to the conductor. Sometimes that is true. But many other attendees wonder: what does a conductor actually do?

We’re in luck. Several conductors have shared their theories about how to conduct. Richard Strauss for example, who was not only a wonderful composer but also an exacting conductor, published these instructive Ten Golden Rules for the Album of a Young Conductor in 1927. We published them in 2015 but many of them bear repeating here:

• Remember that you are making music not to amuse yourself, but to delight your audience.

• You should not perspire when conducting. Only the audience should get warm.

(My teacher Janos Starker used to say, “Don’t be so moved. Move your audiences.”)

• Never look encouragingly at the brass except with a brief glance to give an important cue.

(Richard Wagner quipped, “Never look at the trombones…It only encourages them.” This quote is also attributed to Strauss!)

• But never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight. If you can hear them at all, they are still too strong.

• It is not enough that you yourself should hear every word the soloist sings. You should know it by heart anyway. The audience must be able to follow without effort. If they do not understand the words, they will go to sleep.

• When you think you have reached the limits of prestissimo, double the pace.

Some conductors do accelerate to unplayable tempos. I’ve experienced it! Strauss later, in 1948, changed his mind: Today I should like to amend this. Take the tempo half as fast.

Conductor and legendary pianist Daniel Barenboim seconds that notion:

“The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can’t understand it.”

Herbert von Karajan, the famed conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic added, “Quick music sounds dull unless every note is articulated.”

Renowned composer and conductor Gustav Mahler agreed, “If you think you’re boring your audience go slower not faster.”

Gustav Mahler

There are a lot of opinions on how to interpret music and there are often differences in timing and tempo. Take Beethoven’s famous opening to his Symphony No. 5. I think you’ll be surprised by the versions of the first four bars from Carlos Kleiber, Claudio Abbado, Herbert von Karajan, Pierre Boulez, Bruno Walter, and John Eliot Gardiner. Carlos Kleiber with Vienna plays in a refined style, while Pierre Boulez leads a diabolically slow opening to the 5th.

Comparing 5 conductors VERY different openings of Beethoven 5th Symphony (& why they chose that)   

Aside from being a timekeeper, what more does a conductor do? During an interview when asked this question, Sir Simon Rattle responded, “It’s one of the great fake professions…We are nothing without the orchestra…”

Sir Simon Rattle

Simon Rattle | What Does A Conductor Actually Do? 

South Korean pianist and conductor Myung Whun Chung recently elaborated,

“A conductor almost by definition is a strange animal; he is the only musician on stage that makes no sound, yet he is responsible for everyone else’s. I often would like to think of myself as just a colleague or collaborator with the other musicians, but ultimately, we must come together to be the truthful messengers of the composer we play – and make their music come alive!”

Like other professions, sometimes there’s a domineering and controlling boss. We orchestral players have been subject to heavy-handed conductors, ones we disagree with, or even incapable ones we must ignore.

We’re surprised that Herbert von Karajan, the maestro with a legendary sound, who was an autocrat, once said, “The art of conducting consists in knowing when to stop conducting to let the orchestra play.”

And this is fascinating. Simon Rattle on Karajan:

Simon Rattle on Herbert von Karajan  

Leonard Bernstein, who was the music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1957-1970 and recorded with them until the end of his life, puts it in a nutshell,

“Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time.”

The wonderful thing about music-making is that each orchestra has a personality and will sound different depending on the maestro in front of them. And we can tell from the first upbeat in the music whether the leader is any good. One conductor will inspire a refined, polished sound while another will coax a more robust and aggressive quality, and everything is reflected through the different people onstage.

Conducting gestures vary. The stick or hand technique is essential, but every gesture, facial expression, and overall body language matters.

Here’s an illustration:

Breaking down orchestra conducting gestures to show you what they mean   

Many conductors have an affinity to certain music and a predilection for conducting those works. Our former music director Osmo Vänskä, for example, was terrific with the works of Jean Sibelius but not comfortable with French music. The Minnesota Orchestra’s complete recordings of all the Beethoven Symphonies are considered one of the best, especially of the 4th and 5th symphonies. Other wonderful interpreters include Otto Klemperer, Riccardo Chailly, with Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra, and Carlos Kleiber. Wilhelm Furtwängler’s Beethoven No. 9 performance at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus live in 1951 is notable, and Karajan of course.

Watch this rare live video of excerpts of Beethoven Symphony No. 9 being rehearsed and performed by Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker. It’s their New Year’s Eve concert of 1977 and was the first ever to be broadcast live.

Excerpts of Beethoven’s 9 rehearsal and performance by Herbert von Karajan (1977)  

Some composers inspire controversy, and Maher was certainly one of them. Gustav Mahler, the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna Opera conductor from 1898-1901 and beyond, is quoted as saying, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.” Admired Mahler interpreters include Leonard Bernstein, who was critical in reviving Mahler’s music.

Claudio Abbado, Klaus Tennstedt, Rafael Kubelik, and Sir Simon Rattle, who says, “The Mahler virus is incurable,” are also noted Mahler interpreters. But here’s a caveat from von Karajan.

“Mahler’s music is full of dangers and traps, and one of them, which many fall into, is over sensualizing the thing until it becomes sort of …kitsch.” (‘Kitsch’— when art is considered in poor taste due to garishness or sentimentality.)

From Maestro: Encounters With Conductors of Today
Helena Matheopoulos book “Maestro” consisting of interviews with the world’s twenty-three top orchestral conductors.

Conductors tend to disagree on this subject too. One’s tasteless interpretation is another’s deep revelation.

Strauss even said so, “Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one’s greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?”

You might ask, can an orchestra play without a conductor? Of course we can.

I recently came across an outstanding orchestra that plays without a conductor. Now don’t get me wrong. There is a long tradition of smaller ensembles, chamber orchestras, that play without a conductor. In fact, we have one here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul—the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra. Their stellar performances often lead me to say, “they must be psychic!” as they do not only relegate themselves to so-called classical repertoire of Haydn and Mozart, but they play challenging contemporary works such as Bartók Divertimento, with aplomb and brilliance.

The Going Home Project Orchestra based in Korea plays large-scale works without a conductor including, Stravinsky Rite of Spring, an exceedingly complex work with difficult rhythms and tempo changes. Uncanny. I was flabbergasted at their brilliance as well as their impeccable ensemble. The famous bassoon opening is gorgeous, and the playing of the orchestra throughout is virtuosic.

Self-conducted Live Performance of “Le Sacre du Printemps”    

But the maestro can make magic happen onstage and then it’s inexplicable even to us. Whatever the interpretation we agree with von Karajan,

“To be involved professionally in a thing as creative as music is a great privilege and we have a duty to make in such a way that we can help bring pleasure and a sense of fulfillment to those who are not so fortunate {to be able to play music}.” From Osborne’s Conversations.

I hope this explains conducting. But if you’d like to know more, here is a delightful interview with Simon Rattle, who speaks candidly about his art.

Schubert Facts: 13 Things You Didn’t Know About the Great Composer

by Emily E. Hogstad  November 1st, 2026

Franz Schubert only lived for 31 years, but he left a massive, astonishing body of music: countless songs, symphonies, chamber works, sacred compositions, and even operas.

His life held unique and fascinating contradictions. A devoted circle of friends celebrated him, but he never experienced the public acclaim his peers did. He was enormously prolific, even as his music remained unheard and unpublished. He was one of the greatest composers of his generation, but only one all-Schubert concert was performed during his lifetime.

Here are 13 facts about the life and career of Franz Schubert that reveal the man behind those contradictions – and some of the most beloved music of the 19th century.

Franz Schubert

1. Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children. He grew up close to his brother Ferdinand – who would go on to claim credit for some of Schubert’s music.

Franz Schubert was the twelfth of fourteen children born to Franz Theodor and Elisabeth Schubert. Only five of those children survived past infancy.

As a child, Franz grew especially close to his brother Ferdinand, three years his senior. Ferdinand was a musician and schoolteacher, and he helped mentor his younger brother.

Ferdinand Schubert

Ferdinand also claimed some of Franz’s works as his own, especially while searching for musical jobs. (For what it’s worth, there’s no record of Franz objecting.)

After Franz died in his apartment, Ferdinand inherited Franz’s papers, including his unpublished manuscripts. He navigated the publication and distribution of the works after Franz’s death.

We wrote about Ferdinand Schubert’s story here: https://interlude.hk/ferdinand-schubert-the-composer-who-stole-his-brothers-music/.

2. Schubert composed “Erlkönig” at 17 or 18. It became one of the most famous songs ever written for piano and voice.

Schuber

Goethe’s spooky ballad recounts the story of a father racing on horseback through the night, seeking aid for his feverish son who is hallucinating a supernatural force – the Erlking, a malevolent spirit from German folklore – following them.

The piano part gallops under a vocal line that shifts character between narrator, father, son, and the Erlking himself.

It’s a work of shocking maturity for a teenager: tightly constructed and dramatically expressive. It remains one of the most performed and analysed songs in the entire German Lied tradition.

3. Schubert never held a traditional full-time job past his mid-twenties. Instead, he relied on intermittent teaching and the generosity of friends and family.

After a brief, unenthusiastic stint teaching at his schoolmaster father’s school, Schubert essentially opted out of conventional employment and chose to spend his time composing instead.

He survived on piecework: giving intermittent piano lessons, collecting modest fees from publishers, and accepting financial help from his admiring circle of friends.

This economic precarity colored the rest of his life and career and left him with few means to do things like pay professional musicians to mount large-scale performances.

4. Schubert was so close to his friend Franz von Schober that they referred to themselves using a mashup name: “Schobert.”

Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella  

Franz von Schober – a poet, actor, lithographer, and general dilettante – became one of the composer’s closest and most enduring friends. More than once, he offered him lodging when Schubert ran short of money.

Schober collaborated with Schubert on the 1822 opera Alfonso und Estrella, writing the libretto. They couldn’t mount a performance. (Liszt was the first to do so in 1854; the reception was cool, in part due to Schober’s uneven libretto.)

5. Schubert was only around five feet tall, making him one of the shortest of the great composers.

Franz Schubert, c. 1827

He was so petite and round-faced that his friends nicknamed him “Schwammerl” (“little mushroom”).

He also wore spectacles to help correct his intense nearsightedness. He was never seen without them – and even slept in them so that he didn’t have to struggle finding them if he woke up in the middle of the night with a musical idea.

6. He never married and had no known long-term romantic partner – but did frequent brothels.

The musical life of the 19th century was populated by composers who ran off with married women (for example, Wagner and Liszt) or had cinematic years-long love stories that culminated in happy marriages (the Schumanns).

Schubert’s biography has none of that romantic drama. Indeed, in 1815, a potential groom could not get a marriage license in Vienna without proving he could support not only himself, but a household. Schubert would have had to change lifestyles to marry completely.

We do know that he visited Viennese brothels, a common practice among unmarried men of his generation. He is believed to have contracted syphilis around 1822, when he was in his mid-20s.

7. Schubert abandoned his eighth symphony in 1822, after writing just two movements. He never explained why, and the work wasn’t performed until decades after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 8     

The “Unfinished Symphony” is one of classical music’s great mysteries. It consists of two complete, fully orchestrated movements – and that’s it, even though symphonies of this era have four movements. No sketches survive beyond an abandoned third-movement scherzo, and no letters explain why he stopped.

Theories as to what happened range in seriousness from “fatal illness kept him from continuing” to a simple “he just got distracted by new projects.” But nothing is confirmed.

It remained unperformed until 1865, nearly forty years after Schubert’s death. When it finally premiered in Vienna, it was admired, despite its brevity.

8. Only one public concert of Schubert’s work was given during his lifetime.

On 26 March 1828 – the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death, which may have been a deliberate scheduling choice – a concert was held in Vienna devoted entirely to Schubert’s music.

It was a modest success, well attended and warmly welcomed by a composer who badly needed the money. But it also was the only event of its kind in his lifetime, and Schubert would die less than eight months later.

In the end, any career momentum this concert might have brought Schubert was overshadowed by the arrival of sensational virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini in Vienna.

9. His friends often gathered to hear his new songs and chamber music; these gatherings became known as “Schubertiades.” They included food, drink, dancing, and performances by Schubert himself.

Schubertiade

Held in the homes of supportive friends and patrons, these informal evenings became the closest thing Schubert had to a regular public for his music. A rotating cast of poets, painters, singers, and civil servants all gathered regularly to hear whatever songs or piano pieces Schubert had been working on.

They weren’t stiff recitals, either; accounts describe charades, dancing, wine, and general conviviality alongside the music. It was a blend of salon and party that suited Schubert’s shy temperament much better than the concert hall ever could.

The Schubertiades were also important for the encouragement they brought him, as one of the few occasions when his talent could actually be witnessed and celebrated.

10. He was arrested in early 1820 because the Austrian secret police, alarmed by the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, were aggressively investigating groups of young people and activists.

In 1820, Austria was deeply paranoid about tamping down revolutionary sentiment among students and intellectuals.

That March, the paranoia caught up with Schubert’s circle. His rebellious poet friend Johann Senn was arrested for his defiant conduct toward authorities. Schubert too was swept up, briefly detained, and questioned by police before being released with a reprimand. Senn fared far worse: he spent months in prison and was deported from Vienna.

The story reminds us that the same artistic, tight-knit social circle that nurtured Schubert’s music also existed under very real political surveillance – and not all of Schubert’s friends escaped it unscathed.

11. While composing songs, he set poems by his own friends, not just famous poets.

The young Schubert

Yes, Schubert set poetry by legendary masters like Goethe, Schiller, and Heine.

But his appetite for poetry was insatiable, and his inspiration endless. He also set music to poems by his poet roommate Johann Mayrhofer, Franz von Schober, and others who attended the Schubertiades.

Mayrhofer in particular is worth noting; Schubert set dozens of his poems to music over the years.

This breadth of material says something about what inspired Schubert. He didn’t need the most celebrated works by the most celebrated poets to be inspired.

12. We don’t know exactly what Schubert died of. He had syphilis, but it seems likely that another kind of infection actually killed him.

Schubert died in his brother Ferdinand’s apartment on 19 November 1828 at the age of 31, after a short but severe final illness marked by fever, weakness, and delirium.

He had been living with syphilis for roughly six years by that point, and its long-term effects (along with the side effects of the standard prescribed mercury treatments) had already taken a toll on his health.

But many modern scholars believe the immediate cause of death was something else entirely, possibly typhoid fever contracted from contaminated water or food.

13. Much of Schubert’s music was published or premiered only after his death.

Schubert’s Symphony No. 9    

In 1838, ten years after Schubert died, composer Robert Schumann visited Ferdinand Schubert in Vienna.

While digging through the piles of unpublished manuscripts, he came across the score for the Symphony No. 9 in C major – a sprawling, ambitious work that had never been performed.

Schumann recognised its worth immediately and arranged for Mendelssohn – then the conductor of the storied Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra – to premiere it.

Even in rehearsal, Schumann and Mendelssohn were delighted by what they heard, and the work has remained in the repertoire ever since.

Over the years, Schubert’s other unpublished work surfaced, too. Today, much of it – orchestral music, chamber music, Lied, piano sonatas, and so much more – remains in the repertoire, to the gratitude of musicians and music lovers everywhere.

Herbert Blomstedt (1927–2026) Obituary: Farewell, Legend

 by Jude Leng  November 5th, 2026

The death of Swedish-American conductor Herbert Blomstedt, at the age of 99, marks the passing of one of the last great conductors whose careers reached back to the musical world of the mid-20th century. For more than seven decades, Blomstedt stood before some of the world’s finest orchestras, offering interpretations of extraordinary integrity and conviction. The sheer longevity of his career remains one of the most remarkable phenomena in contemporary musical life, while the uncompromising musicality that Blomstedt brought to his performances is yet another part of his legend.

Blomstedt died on 4 November at his home in Gothenburg, just eight months short of his hundredth birthday. Until his final months, he remained an active presence on the international concert platform. On 15 May 2026, Blomstedt conducted his final concert in San Francisco with the San Francisco Symphony, coincidentally performing Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, a work about farewell in the face of death. The concert was interrupted by Blomstedt’s frail health: during the third movement, Blomstedt slumped farther and farther to his right, prompting his attendants to rush onto the stage. Blomstedt, however, insisted on resuming and completing the performance despite his serious health difficulties, and he subsequently cancelled the remaining two performances in the series.

Herbert Blomstedt in Gothenburg, May 2015 © Eskil Malmberg / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Blomstedt’s last appearance in London, on 21 November 2024, was also a performance of Mahler’s Ninth, this time with the Philharmonia, which I had the honour of attending. By then, Blomstedt had already suffered serious falls in 2022 and 2023, and had to conduct from a piano bench. It was, nevertheless, a performance of incredible magic and musicality. There were undoubtedly compromises imposed by age, but the expressive power was never diminished; on the contrary, it seemed honed to its most vivid form (with no dragging of tempi at all!), culminating in a most nobly Olympian final movement. At the general rehearsal, Blomstedt concluded by saying something to the effect that the body will age and die, but the “spirit” lives on. The performance that very evening was indeed a perfect reflection of his words.   

Daniel Barenboim once said that Wilhelm Furtwängler was a philosopher in rehearsal and a poet in performance. I believe the same applies to Blomstedt, who, well into his tenth decade, continued to discover and refine his musical understanding, remaining an ageless poet. Furtwängler himself was, indeed, an idol of Blomstedt’s, from whom the latter drew inspiration by listening to his rehearsals and concerts. He even obtained Furtwängler’s autograph when the conductor performed in Gothenburg while he was still a boy. Of course, it is difficult to discern obvious links between the conducting styles of the two, but what they perhaps shared was the magical musicality they were able to draw from their orchestras, something that belongs only to great conductors.

Born Herbert Thorson Blomstedt on 11 July 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Swedish parents, he spent his childhood in Sweden and Finland. His parents were Seventh-day Adventists, and their religious convictions profoundly shaped the young Herbert’s upbringing. Music was central to family life, and he learned the piano, violin and organ before developing an increasingly powerful attraction to orchestral music. The values of discipline, modesty and service, instilled in him from childhood, would remain inseparable from his musical outlook.

In 1945, Blomstedt entered the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he began studying conducting. His education continued under a broad range of influential figures, including periods of study with John Cage at Darmstadt, Igor Markevitch in Salzburg, Jean Morel at Juilliard and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood in 1953, the year in which Blomstedt won the Koussevitzky Conducting Prize. His formal conducting debut came in 1954 with the Stockholm Philharmonic, leading directly to his first professional appointment with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden.

After eight years in Norrköping, Blomstedt’s career grew steadily, and he subsequently served as chief conductor or music director of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra (1962–1968), the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra (1967–1977) and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra (1977–1982), with most of which he maintained lifelong associations as conductor laureate. His Nordic years established him as one of the most notable interpreters of Nielsen and Sibelius, while his interests also extended to the neglected Swedish symphonist Franz Berwald.

Herbert Blomstedt in 1967 © Johan Brun / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

A major turning point in his career came in 1975, when the Staatskapelle Dresden, the oldest surviving orchestra in the world, and the Saxon State Opera invited him to become their new chief conductor, following several years during which the orchestra had been without a chief conductor. Blomstedt’s affinity for Austro-German music was further deepened during this period. Over his ten-year tenure, Blomstedt recorded complete cycles of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s symphonies with the orchestra, and helped lift it out of the low ebb that had followed Kurt Sanderling’s departure.

Blomstedt displayed a different side of his artistry during his subsequent tenure with the San Francisco Symphony, where his career reached new heights of international recognition. Having signed with Decca Classics in the late 1980s, Blomstedt and the SFSO recorded a wide range of repertoire for the label, becoming benchmark artists of the digital era and winning three Grammy Awards, a Gramophone Award and a Grand Prix du Disque. There are admirable recordings of Austro-German composers such as Brahms, Mendelssohn and Bruckner, as well as Nordic composers including Berwald, Sibelius and Nielsen, whose works Blomstedt retained at the core of his repertoire in later years. But perhaps most astonishing are the spectacular performances of Hindemith and Bartók, which reveal Blomstedt in his prime, bringing out extraordinary balance and colour. Some of these recordings remain reference recordings for collectors today.

After leaving San Francisco in 1995, Blomstedt returned to Germany as chief conductor of the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, before assuming one of the most historically significant positions in European musical life: Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the world’s oldest civic orchestra, a post he held from 1998 until 2005. Perhaps there was a certain quality in Blomstedt that fostered his affinity with eastern Germany. During his seven-year tenure, Blomstedt expanded the orchestra’s repertoire and refined its unique sound: his love of Hindemith and Nordic repertoire continued here. But, of course, the traditions of Leipzig were not forgotten, particularly his admiration for Bach and Mendelssohn, and the significance of conducting the orchestra with which Mendelssohn himself had once worked. It was under Blomstedt that the Mendelssohn-Festtage became established as a regular fixture in Leipzig’s musical calendar.

Herbert Blomstedt at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, December 2015 © Alexander Böhm / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

After 2005, at the age of 78, Blomstedt decided not to take on any further chief conductorships. The Bamberg Symphony, an orchestra with which he had worked frequently, appointed him honorary conductor in 2006. Perhaps Blomstedt himself would not have imagined that his career would continue for another twenty years. He first conducted the Vienna Philharmonic on 26 January 2011, aged 83, during Salzburg’s Mozartwoche festival, stepping in at short notice to replace Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who was actually two years his junior, and becoming the oldest debutant in the orchestra’s history at the time. What began as a last-minute substitution developed into a celebrated artistic partnership, culminating in his appointment as an honorary member in 2019.

Why was Blomstedt loved by so many orchestras? Authority, of course, comes from age and experience, but it was his unique humility and wealth of knowledge that made Blomstedt such an adored figure. Conducting mostly without a baton in his later years, Blomstedt was not a conductor who marked every beat clearly; rather, his magical hands shaped poetry with wonderful directness and genuineness. By contrast, films of his earlier, baton-wielding years reveal a certain sharpness and power. Particularly in his later years, Blomstedt’s conducting technique was economical but effective, and, of course, worked best with orchestras that knew him well. Yet there was never any wallowing, despite his frail health in the final years. Blomstedt knew too well how to shape phrases according to the natural flow of breath, and his musical pulse retained an inner vigour.

There was much modesty in Blomstedt’s character, but also a determination born of his firm beliefs. A devout Seventh-day Adventist, Blomstedt always refused to rehearse on Friday evenings or Saturdays, the Sabbath in Seventh-day Adventism, while remaining open to concert performances on those days. And Blomstedt only conducted works that he absolutely loved, which, according to Esa-Pekka Salonen, was the secret that kept him vigorous.

Bruckner, in particular, occupied a special place in Blomstedt’s artistic life. A natural Brucknerian, Blomstedt devoted a large proportion of his career to conducting Bruckner, which was not unusual for conductors of his generation. His interpretations of Bruckner continued to evolve over time, but always possessed a wisdom, patience, command and spiritual conviction rarely encountered among conductors, as well as an inner vitality that made even the most expansive passages purposeful.

Herbert Blomstedt, Bruckner’s Ninth, Elbphilharmonie © Gerda Arendt / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

In his later years, Blomstedt generally focused on the works that interested him most, particularly Bruckner and, of course, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Sibelius and others. What made his interpretations so admirable—and probably why Blomstedt remained a figure beloved by orchestras and audiences alike—was that they always offered new discoveries and insights that could scarcely be found elsewhere. But there was new repertoire, too. Blomstedt came rather late to the Second Symphony of his fellow Swede Wilhelm Stenhammar, taking it up in his late eighties, around 2013, and subsequently making a recording of the Symphony No. 2 and the Serenade for Orchestra, Op. 31, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.

Vigour lay at the very heart of Blomstedt’s artistry and, indeed, his personality. I once heard someone close to him say that “music kept him alive”, and perhaps it is most fitting to conclude with Blomstedt’s own words to CBS News Sunday Morning in 2025: “Without work, I don’t live. If I just twiddle my thumbs, that is not living.” May he live forever through the music he leaves behind.