Leif Segerstam

Leif Selim Segerstam to Selim Segerstam and Viola Maria Kronqvist, into a musical Swedish-speaking family. Selim made several song books as a living. Then, Segerstams moved to Helsinki in 1947. During Leif's time at school, he played violin and viola with Helsinki Youth Orchestra.

Segerstam took part, as second conductor, in a 1968 tour of the Helsinki Philharmonic to the United States. He conducted as a guest at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, La Scala in Milan and the Royal Opera House in London, with a repertoire including Verdi's Aida and Don Carlo, R. Strauss' Salome and Elektra and Wagner's Tannhäuser and Der fliegende Holländer. including the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (Salzburg Festival 1971-1975), the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Toronto Symphony, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestra of the State of São Paulo.

From autumn 1997 to spring 2013, he was professor of orchestra conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

In 2004 he made a cameo appearance in the Finnish film Pelicanman.

On 22 December 2015, while conducting the fourth and final movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's, Scheherazade, "Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. The Ship Breaks against a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman", around the 45 min mark, Segerstam gave his own alternative performance of the piece, and cried as if he were a pirate, while invoking members of the orchestra to do the same, to emulate the shipwreck moment in the symphonic poem's storyline.

In 2024, he was hospitalized after a "brief bout of pneumonia", dying after complications related to the disease at the hospital on 9 October 2024.

Compositions

As a composer, Segerstam is especially known for his many symphonies, which numbered 371 by March 2024.

Most of his symphonies last for about 20 minutes, are formed of a single movement and can be performed without a conductor. This is partially inspired by Sibelius' Seventh symphony. More than a hundred of Segerstam's symphonies have been performed. He developed a personal approach to aleatory composition through a style called "free pulsation" in which musical events interact flexibly in time, with his composition method persistent throughout his œuvre. This composition approach proved to be a quick way of writing large blocks of sound (the temporal order of events being left to the performer) and permitted an exceptionally prolific output. Instead of constituting individual works, his music is more like a musical stream of consciousness (under the headings of Thoughts, Episode and Orchestral Diary Sheet). It also means that there are numerous scorings of the same piece.

Among Segerstam's juvenilia (1960–1969) are four string quartets from 1962–1966, and the post-impressionist ballet Pandora from 1967. The quartets are usually labeled as from his "Post-Expressionist" period.

Personal life Segerstam was married to the violinist , concertmaster of the Finnish RSO; they had two children.

In a 2024 interview, Segerstam mentioned being autistic. 2004, he was awarded the annual State Prize for Music in Finland. 2005, he was awarded the Sibelius Medal.

Recordings Segerstam is widely known through his recordings, which include the complete symphonies of Blomdahl, Brahms, Mahler, Nielsen, and Sibelius, as well as many works by contemporary composers, such as the Americans John Corigliano and Christopher Rouse, the Finnish Einojuhani Rautavaara, Swedish Allan Pettersson, and the Russian Alfred Schnittke.

The following is a list of selected orchestral recordings conducted by Segerstam.