Conductor Blomstedt still a force at 84

Call it the Wolfgang Sawallisch effect. At age 84, conductor Herbert Blomstedt has conducted throughout Europe and the United States with inspired solidity for a half century. And, like Sawallisch in his final Philadelphia years, the professorial Blomstedt isn't fading into old-age mellowness; instead, he has acquired forceful intensity.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is the latest topflight ensemble to have Blomstedt as an honored guest, in a career marked by serial music directorships from Dresden to San Francisco to Leipzig. When that artistic uptick is brought to his attention, his explanation is simple: Now that he's not tethered to any one of those orchestras, "I know of no musician anywhere who is afraid of me, because I can't do them any harm," he says. "I can only make them happy. And that's a good feeling."

Thus, he's also less preoccupied with administrative matters when conducting Beethoven, as he will Thursday through Saturday with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at the Kimmel Center. "I feel much freer," he says.

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Sweden, Blomstedt made his name in the former East Germany after several Czech conductors working there abruptly quit in 1968 when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. The East German orchestras scrambled for conductors and latched onto Blomstedt, sight unseen. For years, he hesitated to take an official position under the Communist regime, but the mutual love affair between him and the Dresden Staatskapelle wasn't just irresistible: During his 1975-85 tenure, it yielded a series of recordings that conferred upon Blomstedt an international career.

The San Francisco Symphony (1985-95) and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra (1998-2005) established him as a musician of unimpeachable authority. And though no conductor is universally adored - to some, Blomstedt is just not that exciting - one Cleveland Orchestra musician wrote (at www.clevelandorchestramusicians.org), "He is in control of every nuance in every bar of the score, yet grants the players freedom and spontaneity. While conducting, his face often glows with a giddy smile, as if thinking, 'This is fun.' "

There may be a simpler reason why musicians like him. "[In rehearsal] you have to know when to stop," the conductor says. "Otherwise, you'll kill people."