Sigma Alpha Iota

20 Winter 2025 • sai-national.org 20 Winter 2025 • sai-national.org By Jayne I. Hanlin My first meeting backstage with Herbert Blomstedt was August 29, 2016, just prior to his conducting the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig in an all-Beethoven program at Royal Albert Hall in London. Speaking about my late brother, concert pianist Malcolm Frager, he said, "Malcolm was one of my best friends in the world of music." Between 1961 and 1990, they collaborated onstage in thirteen concerts that included concertos by Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Prokofiev, Schumann, and von Weber, performing in five countries — Norway, Denmark, Germany, the United States, and the Netherlands. Born in 1927, Blomstedt started his musical studies on the violin in Gothenburg, Sweden, and later switched to conducting. His debut was in Stockholm in 1954; afterward he held principal positions directing the Oslo Philharmonic, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. Backstage in Chicago in 2020, I was invited to visit the Herbert Blomstedt Collection, which had become part of the Gothenburg University Library a decade earlier. Available for research and study, this incomplete collection currently fills about 400 meters of shelving — a distance of approximately a quarter of a mile. Still housed in Blomstedt's flat in Lucerne, Switzerland, is the remaining part — his musical scores and autographs, books acquired recently, and recordings. Dr. Seuss advises: "Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks." But Maestro's collection of books certainly is not arranged haphazardly. The locked room on the library's lowest level has ten rows with twelve sets of six-tiered shelves (each thirty-four inches wide). Senior Librarian Anders Larsson revealed that whenever Blomstedt visits, he walks to any desired book: the book arrangement is exactly as formerly in his home. Inside each book is an artistic bookplate designed by Anders Bodebeck. When asked about his book acquisition, Blomstedt told me that it began in 1962 "out of necessity for information" as Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic. Wanting to do his job fully as a leader of musical life in Norway, he started looking in the city's antique book stores to learn about the country's culture. Continuing similar agendas in subsequent European posts, he purchased the works of Søren Kierkegaard in Denmark and the works of Goethe, Albrecht Dürer, Thomas Mann, and many others in Germany. Not surprising, perhaps, his German collection is the largest. Knowing Blomstedt's practice in each location, I was not surprised to spot an eye-catching title on a colorful book spine in the first row of shelves: Daughters of Painted Ladies: America's Resplendent Victorians. It was one of two books about San Francisco's historic homes painted with at least three colors. By degrees, he became a bibliophile — fascinated by the book world itself. The Herbert Blomstedt Collection reflects his varied range of interests, such as art, archaeology, natural sciences, literature, philosophy, and religion. Each library stack is organized by genre and arranged by language — English, Swedish, Norwegian, German — and even Japanese! File drawers containing copies of cards Blomstedt typed give information about content as well as purchase price of every book. He has the originals at home. To access the titles in the collection online, go to: https://bit.ly/BlomstedtPP. A Wld of Music The Herbert Blomstedt Collection

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