i want to pay a brief tribute to Finnish conductor and composer Leif Segerstam, who died yesterday at the age of 80. As i noted a few years ago, i’m not a conductor fanboy, but Segerstam was one of the few who consistently got me excited every time he was leading a performance. i should point out, with some sadness, that i never got the chance to witness him in action in the concert hall; my entire experience of his work has been via recordings. But it’s been quite an experience.
i first came across him about 25 years ago, when i bought three second-hand CDs, comprising Segerstam’s Scriabin symphony cycle with the Stockholm Philharmonic. i was already in love with Scriabin, but Segerstam made me fall in love all over again and, more importantly, helped me to realise why that love was so deep and so passionate. Two-and-a-half decades later, it’s still my go-to Scriabin cycle, and it blows me away anew every time.
i don’t always feel his interpretations are the best. i had high hopes when first sitting down to his recording, with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, of Rued Langgaard‘s astonishing Symphony No. 1, but Segerstam was evidently so keen to linger in the work’s opulence – as well as, perhaps, trying to clarify its denser textures – that the momentum becomes compromised and its power diminished. Yet despite that, it’s still the recording that demonstrates the best understanding of the symphony’s wild extremes. Segerstam causes the orchestra to practically explode with radiance and power, majesty and beauty, to the extent that i find myself irresistibly drawn back to it. Some passages in that recording – now 30 years old – sound literally incredible.
And then there’s his commitment to the symphonies of Allan Pettersson, all of which i explored in this year’s Lent Series. As i noted in one of the final instalments, “i’ve just realised that every time Leif Segerstam has recorded one of Pettersson’s symphonies, it’s turned out to be the best”. Here, too, Segerstam instinctively understood not only the depth and complexity of Pettersson’s music, but also its immediacy and – always overlooked – clarity of utterance. Sadly, he didn’t record them all, but his accounts of symphonies nos. 3, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 15, all with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, are absolutely unbeatable, among the most riveting recordings i’ve ever heard.
Perhaps this innate empathy toward more complex music came from his own compositional instincts. Segerstam was himself a symphonist, and at the time of his death had written no fewer than 354 of them, the last of which – unless something else comes to light – was completed last year. (Putting together a Segerstam Complete Symphonies box set is now going to be a herculean challenge for some enterprising record label.) Despite my fondness for Segerstam and my life-long passion for exploring symphonies, i’ve only scratched the surface of his symphonic output, in part because very few of them have yet been recorded. This is surely a side of his musical personality that’s in need of some serious attention in the years ahead.
The most recent of his symphonies that i’ve encountered is Symphony No. 344, composed in 2021, which bears the subtitle, “Saluting a royal soul…”, bordercrossingly…. The piece was dedicated to Prince Philip, who died that year, and Segerstam remarked that he was “inspired to try to think: what was he thinking at the last measures of his life score?”. The answer, according to the symphony, appears to be something akin to one’s entire life flashing through the mind.
Throughout, the symphony’s modus operandi is to present ideas in parallel. Engaging with this for 17 minutes is therefore something of a challenge, though the more time i’ve spent with the piece, the less convinced i am that disentangling the various threads is as important as revelling in the convoluted effect of their superimposition. There’s a genuine thrill to be had from being thrown into the midst of all this, the ear moving left to right, front to back, continually recalibrating and refocusing, like a symphonic rendition of the cocktail party effect. As such, whether or not any particular idea takes priority, or has greater significance, is a moot point. Interestingly, this has the paradoxical effect of making everything seem all-important, the ear not wanting to miss anything as it passes by. In practice, that’s not so difficult, as despite the density of the symphony, its sense of pace is such that at no point does it appear to be rushing past. There’s an abundance of time to try to make some sense of the melee.
Furthermore, it’s not just an undifferentiated hodgepodge of stuff strewn together. Certain instruments assume quasi-soloistic roles within the orchestral make-up, either through elegance (piano) or persistence (percussion), and there are several structural moments when Segerstam allows for something akin to repose. At these points, though never falling silent, we’re nonetheless able to draw breath, and briefly listen more clearly to the elements continuing in the much thinner texture. Along the way, we’re treated to falling cascades, endless dry thwacks from drums (either trying to punctuate the work or simply make their presence continually felt), brass preoccupied by chords that veer between ominous and ferocious, a light jazzy bassline that materialises and vanishes on a whim, violins keen to trace out the contour of some sort of melody, varying forms of metallic percussion glitter, some leftfield appearances from a flexatone and a birdcall, and a host of other gestures and flourishes that rumble and shiver all around. It’s not a steady state, and in its closing minutes Segerstam appears to be suggesting the various forces are not all equal but a more pointed juxtaposition of opposites. Yet in its entirety the symphony does speak as an equilibrium of sorts, albeit a highly intricate, labyrinthine one.
It’s often said that the meaning of the word symphony is “sounding together” which, though inaccurate, is an apt descriptor for the way Symphony No. 344 operates. A better definition would be “an agreement of sounds”, and i would argue that that still applies in this work. Despite the simultaneity, despite the unavoidable tensions resulting from an orchestra acting not as a homogeneous, single-minded entity but a large collection of individual groups making unique contributions to the sonic totality, i’ve never been able to identify anything in the piece that overtly suggests conflict or antagonism. On the contrary, over time the combined effect just seems more and more joyous, a reckless, superabundant outpouring of material: suggestions and memories, fragments and possibilities, resounding one last time before, as the title intimates, crossing over that most ultimate and final of borders.
Segerstam has now crossed that border himself, yet he’s left us with the most remarkable legacy of recordings and compositions that will no doubt continue to perplex, dazzle and illuminate us for many, many years to come.
The world première of Symphony No. 344 “Saluting a royal soul…”, bordercrossingly…, was given in October 2021 by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Segerstam himself.
…not to mention a potentially infinite one, given that Segerstam’s methodology for putting these works together means that every single performance (recorded or otherwise) would sound utterly unique.
Reminds me, sometimes, of the incomparable Charles Ives.
btw – has (anyone) heard that symphony 1 by the (rather silly) Austrian extreme Actionist artist Hermann Nitsch (RIP). Glorious