Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt has withdrawn from the San Francisco Symphony’s remaining weekend performances on the advice of his doctors after struggling to get through the orchestra’s concert on Friday, May 15, featuring Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.
The remaining performances, on Saturday and Sunday, May 16-17, at Davies Symphony Hall, will be led by conductor David Robertson, the Symphony announced.
At 98, the Symphony’s conductor laureate has spent decades pursuing an astonishingly vital guest conducting career; just last week, he conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the same piece without incident.
But his current visit to San Francisco has been dogged with concerns about his health. He arrived feeling fatigued, according to a Symphony spokesperson, and was admitted to a hospital as a precautionary move while Robertson took over rehearsals.
Blomstedt was sufficiently recovered to lead the final dress rehearsal Friday morning. But he was clearly in a weakened state as he took the stage that night. Three attendants took him to the podium in a wheelchair and wrangled him with evident difficulty onto the piano bench from which he now conducts.
Although he conducted the orchestra as alertly as ever, Blomstedt had trouble staying upright, leaning further and further to his right until he was nearly horizontal. During the third of the symphony’s four movements, the performance stopped as stage attendants brought out an armchair and transferred him to the more supportive seating arrangement.
Blomstedt is scheduled to return to Davies in January 2027, six months before his 100th birthday in July.
David Robertson, shown in 2021, will conduct the San Francisco Symphony on Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17. (Lawrence Jenkins/Dallas Morning News)
Robertson, a champion of contemporary composers, has served as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony, music director of the St. Louis Symphony and principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in addition to other roles with symphonies worldwide.
Tickets and seat locations will be honored for patrons who already purchased tickets for Saturday’s and Sunday’s concerts. For assistance with tickets, patrons can contact the box office by calling 415-864-6000, emailing patronservices@sfsymphony.org, or appearing in person at the Davies box office, on Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street.
Subscribe
There’s more to San Francisco with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.
This article originally published at Herbert Blomstedt withdraws from weekend S.F. Symphony concerts after struggling.
