Leif Segerstam (1944-2024)

[Symphonic Addict]

This exceptional conductor and composer passed away today. May he rest in peace.

[DavidW]

He was a great conductor and pioneer of many neoromantic composers. I have never listened to any of his compositions. Perhaps I should.

[Symphonic Addict]

He certainly was a great conductor and a more eccentric composer. Like you, I haven't heard a note of his works yet.

[Cato]

He certainly was a great conductor and a more eccentric composer. Like you, I haven't heard a note of his works yet.

Over 350 symphonies: I heard a few of them back in the 1980's and '90's, when BIS released some of them, with commentaries by the composer.

I do not recall which number, but I think #16 "Thoughts at the Border" was the first one I heard.

Let's just say the experience was not on the level of the composers whose works he was conducting. (e.g. Hans Rott, Sibelius, et al.).

But who knows?  Maybe there are some gems lurking in those masses of ink and paper!

[brewski]

I, too, have yet to hear any of his compositions (350+ symphonies!), but have long enjoyed his recordings. Just saw some of his Schnittke mentioned elsewhere, and that seems like a good idea.

-Bruce

[Crudblud]

I was about to call him 'the greatest Schnittke conductor' as if I had listened to many others. Regardless, Segerstam has left a formidable body of work on record. I suspect his day as a composer is not today, however, partly because, as others have already noted, his output is going to take a long time for time itself to sort through. There is perhaps something noble in presenting such a challenge in itself, though.

[pjme]

   We'll miss him. 

My introduction to Segerstam:

[Florestan]

May God rest him in peace.

Like many here, I've never heard a not of his music.

[Ganondorf]

RIP. My first live Wagner's Ring cycle was conducted by him in 2011 at Finnish National Opera and I remember well both the tremendous power he drew from the orchestra as well as the great lyricism in subtle moments.

He will be missed.

[Wanderer]

I'm very fond of several of his recordings, including his Mahler, Sibelius, Langgaard and Scriabin on Chandos. May he rest in peace.

[relm1]

I remember reading this a few years ago and being charmed by his wit. RIP. 

The Quotations Of Leif Segerstam
A few years ago we worked with Leif Segerstam, a composer/conductor from Finland. He had a remarkably creative way of using the English language, and as usual, I started writing my favourite quotes in our music. After a few days, I learned that several other members of the orchestra were doing the same thing. This is a compilation of our efforts.
Unlike the collected quotations of another famous conductor, these aren't just the fractured phrases of someone who speaks English as a second language - we have before us a record of the creative mind of a kaleidescopic flexator electrifically fluxating new meaning into a tired old language.

Could we have a relativity normal beginning?
Take ``La Forza Del Destino'' and half it.
I want the music more traumatised.
Like an old time Western locomotive we can get the organity of the puffing.
The kaleidescopic flexator on the podium --- the conductor.
Keep an irony rhythm.
You are still mauving.
The string section without the basses is a plasmatic living cluster.
Here you should have a little worm.
A sort of indignated way of playing before the la minore explosion.
You have to become a little dirty about the fingerboard there.
Flutterzungen in the mind.
Was this a conspiration to read my beat?
Just play in your box until you come to the climax. . . so that we hear the clappering.
. . . if you get music early in your brainal functions.
The old quarter note becomes very freshly enough the new quarter note.
You could take a speed of 33 metronome, or 22.
A dividing 50 percent reaction tempo-wise.
The quintuplet should be freshly and rudely the same as the triplet.
I am in 76 of this here.
Still together, conductified.
Could I have something which is close to that which is underneath the pencil?
The atmospheric things must have a millimetre to do with the speed.
The winds can rehearse the length of the teedle-eedle-boom.
Something is satelliting out of the control of the beated music.
I have words for everything that can be expressed.
Coincidentimently
Embryomalic
Electrifically
Fiveishness
Flimmer
Inexclickable
Fenugrish five things
I am fluxating in 8.
It is a Valsefy.
There is a slight worm to be executed very much together.
It should be the emigrated Loch Ness. (to the basses)
Please don't play sloppy dactyls that they don't know what it is.
We do it Wiener Schule kind of poco apostrophe.
Try to use this optical notation.
How about talking about the spot where someone composes the registration number of his car.
You haven't experienced it because nobody is doing it.
Could we have a rude accord between First and Second Violins?
You could allow if you have got long ears. . .
. . . whatever bumble thing. . .
. . . a small dog noise. . .
. . . almost a gorilla sound. . .
You don't need to count here. You won't get lost because at the end, I will turn and look at you stoppingly!
Could I see lead being sacrificed on the paper?
If you are not the leader you will be the first one.
Dibble-Dibble. . . GUSTAV!!
Keep the fermata of the rest interesting.
Three centimetres of wavy lines, then you play the music.
Somebody singing a far-fetched diagonals from Sibelius' Finlandia.
Hypnotic and destiny-filled.
It is very beautiful what you played, but you are forgetting one thing that makes it tomorrow too loud.
Who would sacrifice a violin?
You play whenever you get there.
Tonnmeister, are you heavy enough in the Glockenbox?
I always get very pounding sounds on the one there.
At 7 o'clock we do the Klami piece and then my piece places.
Two terracic slowing downs.
. . . a comma in the Heaven.
The gravity is on the beat composed.
Listen to these gorilla players. (in reference to the Cello section)
Is the Donnerblech organised in the strings now?
You could really be princessy pochissimo.
Wait for the Puccini bit in four and make like the Diva.
. . . like an augmented ambulance siren.
I'm still here doing things in this direction.
Segerstam disease: gastronomical music.
More grease in the pianissimo.
The non-metric pulsator on the podium.
It's a late threeness.
There are misleadings. . .
More like James Bond Goldfinger.
You don't have to dirten your notation.
It really sounds like some Tom and Jerry accompanimiento sounding.
Use parabolic crescendi. . . they are more animalic.
My left hand will look at you.
We get a plankton plasmatic flimmer.
Each individual is not together.
We will enter in the right times, so the shortening is to the left.
Native folkloric haemiolas that you should have in your Mahler bloods.
I have to be the bumper to take all these colleagueual comments to the playing trumpets.
Please compose the six rests that are missing.
Could you technically program that for the next time playing?
Quasi dim pencil, and feathers are for the wish here.
I am very hacking because of the scales there.
Don't make it sound as brutal as my left hand, please.
You are still mouldering (to the percussion).
There are people swallowing time.
We still have a pleep.
There is a confusion about.

[DavidW]

Some of my favorites under Segerstam are Sibelius, Rautavaara, Norgard, and Pettersson.

[Brian]

I have words for everything that can be expressed.

Wow, it really was true! 

What an interesting conductor, who clearly had great enthusiasm for the huge amounts of repertoire he conductified.

[Mandryka]

The screaming Scheherezade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY4w4_W30aQ&t=2699s

[Maestro267]

His Langgaard 1 and Schnittke 1 are top-tier recordings imo.

[Kalevala]

@relm1

I loved the "Could we have a relatively normal beginning?" 

K

[Mandryka]

Try the seventh quartet.

[Iota]

Very sorry to hear this. I'd thought he was about 70 rather than 80, there was something abidingly youthful about the personality he projected, which I liked. A recording of his that springs straight to mind is the Tapiola with the Helsinki Philharmonic, which is probably my favourite.
And I love some of those comments @relm1. If I was an orchestral player trying to understand what a conductor was after, they'd make such good sense.

[foxandpeng]

Some of my favorites under Segerstam are Sibelius, Rautavaara, Norgard, and Pettersson.

Seconded. The last three, in particular. They may not all be the first interpretations or recordings that I turn to, but he rarely disappointed me.

[vandermolen]

Sad news. I didn't like his own compositions but thought v highly of him as a conductor. He was my first choice for Sibelius's 3rd Symphony (Chandos), Tapiola and 4 Legends (Ondine) and Kullervo Symphony + Rautavaara's 7th and 8 Symphonies. There was also a fine recording of Allan Pettersson's 8th Symphony.