In Memoriam Leif Segerstam
Prof. Nils Schweckendiek tells about his memories of maestro Leif Segerstam who passed on October 9 2024.
Leif Segerstam served as Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the Sibelius Academy from 1997 until 2013. My first encounter with him was when I auditioned for his class in May 2000 and was accepted. To this day I remember the look of unbridled joy he gave me when I – apparently successfully – rehearsed the orchestral balance in a passage from Sibelius’ Third Symphony that afternoon.
As a teacher Leif’s stated priorities for his students were “to be calligraphically beautiful” and “to be a personality”. He wanted us to have a clear, unmistakable beat, as he himself did, proudly relating that none other than Carlos Kleiber had told him that he had the best third beat (in four) of anyone in the world.
The question of personality is a difficult one to teach, but Leif devised his own method. He abhorred conventionality and lived his life to excess in a number of ways. Rather than explaining things in a manner that was immediately comprehensible, he enjoyed complicated multilingual word games and challenged his students to follow the unusual turns of his mind to all manner of places. For him, the opening of Mozart’s 40th symphony was a swarm of mayflies dancing in full awareness of their imminent death. There were references to voodoo and numerology, primal screams, and long feedback sessions that often moved to the now-defunct Benjam’s bistro in which he encouraged the students to forget their inhibitions and build up their joie-de-vivre and alcohol tolerance. Although he could of course be extremely organised, he seemed to resent the trend towards rationalisation and sanitisation in the world around him and wanted instead to celebrate the irrational and the magic at the core of human existence, as he saw it. Sadly this desire to break taboos and shock also sometimes led him to make comments that were not socially acceptable then and would be even less so now.
At the time I was his student Leif was Chief Conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and in the first years he also regularly conducted at the Finnish National Opera. For us it was a wonderful opportunity to go to see him practise what he preached in both rehearsal and performance. His schedule was exhausting – sometimes rehearsing at Finlandia Hall in the morning, conducting a four-hour opera just up the road in the evening, then back at Finlandia the next day for a dress rehearsal and concert. The work we saw was never less than reliable and many times extraordinary, although given how busy he was, one might occasionally leave the rehearsal feeling that with his phenomenal natural gifts and unusually wide knowledge of the repertoire he could have moulded some of his performances in still more detail.
The following morning Leif would be teaching us at the Sibelius Academy Concert Hall. We never knew quite what to expect: sometimes he was typically direct and vocal in his demands of the students, but often he just let us get on with it. Yet there was a pedagogical method here: we had to learn to cope by ourselves and if we dug ourselves a hole, we had to find a way out of it. At the feedback sessions there was never a dearth of perceptive musical and technical comments.
Leif was generally very supportive of his students and ex-students. Although it was always made clear who was the boss, he was generous in giving them opportunities and making himself available for consultation on scores. A good number of them have gone on to make a significant mark on musical life around the world.
The Department of Conducting would like to express its deep condolences to the family and loved ones Leif Segerstam leaves behind, and its deep gratitude for his immense contribution to Finnish musical life.
Nils Schweckendiek
Professor of Choral Conducting
Student of Leif Segerstam 2000-2004 and his assistant at the Savonlinna Opera Festival 2006-2007.
On behalf of the Department of Conducting:
Sakari Oramo
Professor of Orchestral Conducting
Colleague of Leif Segerstam and violinist under his direction on many occasions.
Petri Komulainen
Lecturer in Wind Orchestra Conducting
Student of Leif Segerstam 2004-2008