Leif Segerstam earned recognition chiefly through his work on the podium, where he stood among Finland’s leading figures in that role during the final decades of the 20th century and the opening years of the 21st. Composition also occupied much of his time, and the sheer volume of pieces he produced complicated any attempt to organize them into a complete list. When he reached the age of 80 in 2024, audiences heard the first performance of what was numbered as his Symphony No. 371. The vast quantity of music, however, gave a misleading impression because he often reworked identical material for varied instrumentations through aleatoric techniques that employed simpler and less detailed notation. Even so, the total included innumerable pieces for orchestra and chorus, along with concertos, songs, string quartets, and other instrumental compositions. During 2020 he directed the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra in a recorded performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 issued by the Alba label.
Segerstam entered the world in Vaasa, Finland, on March 2, 1944. While still in his mid-teens he enrolled at the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, studying violin under Liisa Siikonen and conducting under Jussi Jalas. He also demonstrated notable skill at the keyboard and captured first prize at the Maj Lind Piano Competition staged by the Sibelius Academy in 1962. The next year he completed his studies with diplomas in both violin and conducting and presented his debut major recital as a violinist. By that point he had already begun composing, producing the brief orchestral score A Legend (Nils-Eric Fougstedt in Memoriam) in 1960 and the Three Songs for soprano and piano (1960-1961). After graduation he continued his training at the Juilliard School of Music, where his teachers included Louis Persinger for violin, Jean Morel for conducting, and Vincent Persichetti together with Hall Overton for composition.
His first significant conducting position arrived in 1965 at the Finnish National Opera, where he later served as artistic director for the 1973-1974 season. Additional operatic posts followed in Scandinavia and Germany: he worked at the Royal Opera in Stockholm from 1968 to 1972 and spent a single season (1972-1973) at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Throughout these early conducting years he continued to compose at a steady pace, producing several string quartets—the Fifth, subtitled “Lemming,” marked an important stylistic turning point through its adoption of aleatory procedures—and the song collection Tre plus eller fyra NNNUUUU-R for mezzo-soprano and piano, setting texts by Gunnar Björling.
Between 1977 and 1985 he successively held conducting positions with three secondary European orchestras: the Austrian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic Orchestra. In 1989 he became chief conductor of the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. For the BIS, Ondine, and Finlandia labels he recorded, among other works, his symphonies No. 9, No. 11, and No. 13, as well as the violin concertos Concerto Serioso and A Last Melodioso, with his then-wife Hannele Segerstam as soloist. After leaving the Danish National Radio Symphony in 1995 he accepted the post of chief conductor with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and returned once more to Stockholm’s Royal Opera as music director.
He remained at the Royal Opera until 2000 and relinquished his Helsinki post in 2007, thereafter carrying the title of chief conductor emeritus. During his tenure at the Royal Opera he led a broad repertoire; in 2002, for instance, he conducted Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, and Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair. Guest engagements took him to the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Turku Philharmonic. With the latter ensemble he recorded Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 for the Alba label in 2020. Segerstam maintained an active schedule of conducting and composing into the 2020s, completing no fewer than five symphonies during 2021; his Symphony No. 371 received its premiere at the composer’s 80th-birthday celebration in March 2024. Segerstam died on October 9, 2024.
