Leif Segerstam, eccentric self-styled ‘Jesus of music’ who composed over 300 symphonies

Tipping the scales at 35 stone, he was a sight to be seen at the podium, given to asking his orchestras for ‘more grease in the pianissimo’

Leif Segerstam, who has died aged 80, was a prolific composer, a maverick conductor and an ebullient performer on violin, piano and any other instrument he could lay his hands on; a great bear of a man, he looked like a cross between Moses and Father Christmas thanks to an unruly white beard, while his personality veered dangerously between genius and eccentric.
The Finn had a voracious appetite for everything: great music, scintillating company, fine wine and delicious food. He was said to tip 35 stone on the scales and on one occasion reputedly ate one of every item on the menu of a Salzburg restaurant.
His catalogue of more than 370 symphonies, many of them impulsive creations allowing the performers considerable rhythmic freedom, dwarfed the output of Joseph Haydn, whose tally is widely accepted as 106. Unlike Haydn’s, most of Segerstam’s works are delights remaining to be discovered. They also have titles as colourful as their composer – such as No 289, When a Cat Visited. “One should just follow the track made with the paws,” he explained enigmatically.
Watching him at the podium was a never-to-be-forgotten adventure for audiences and musicians, his baton spending much of its time at the top of an upbeat, somewhere behind his right ear. The players knew the sound he wanted, even if his “Segerstamisms” left some bewildered. “More grease in the pianissimo” was a favourite.
If some performances sounded dull and under-rehearsed, they probably were; hit-and-miss was a recurring motif in his reviews. The next concert, or even the next work, though, could deliver persuasive phrasing, thrilling rhythms and volcanic dynamics. The minutiae of a piece was of little concern; he focused on the bigger picture, the grand sound, the overall result.
Segerstam never tired of promoting his country’s most famous composer, Jean Sibelius. “A Finnish orchestra playing the beloved Sibelius is like Elgar for you,” he told the Birmingham Post, although he had an unhealthy obsession with the fact that Sibelius’s opus number for his Tapiola tone poem, 112, was the same as the emergency number.
He was also a great champion of another Finnish composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara, recording several of his symphonies for the Ondine label, though like his concert performances his discs were often idiosyncratic accounts of the music.
The pianist Ivo Varbanov told the Slippedisc website how they were once in a Turku hotel lobby, eating the conductor’s homemade chicken wings and discussing the music of Sibelius. Sharing the lobby was a parrot, and Segerstam decided to teach the bird a few things, “It was a small, delightful moment that perfectly captured his playful spirit and his joy in the little things in life,” said Varbanov.
Leif Selim Segerstam was born into a musical family in Vaasa, a city in the west of Finland, on March 2 1944, one of three children of Selim Segerstam and his wife Viola Kronqvist. He learnt to read books aged three and sheet music aged five, and composed his first music aged six. By then his family had moved to the capital, Helsinki, where he played violin and viola in the city’s youth orchestra.
He made his debut as a violin soloist in 1962 and the following year conducted his first opera, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, in Tampere. In 1967 the first Camden Arts Festival in London featured his Three Leaves of Grass, a group of Walt Whitman settings performed by their dedicatee Heather Harper, accompanied at the piano by Walter Susskind.
From the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki he continued his studies in the US at the Aspen Music Festival and the Juilliard School, New York. At 23 he conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra on their American tour, by which time he already held a post with the Finnish National Opera. Elsewhere, he was principal conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (1975-82) and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (1988-1995).
In 1995 he was appointed chief conductor of the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra, bringing the Finns on a seven-concert tour of Britain that autumn. At the same time he took up a similar post with the Royal Stockholm Opera in Sweden.
Segerstam was as unpredictable off stage as on it. James Jolly from Gramophone magazine found him “an alarming person to interview”. Others reported that he reacted badly to challenging questions, spouting sexist nonsense or spewing blasphemy. “I’m almost like the Jesus of music,” he told the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in March. “In the world of music, I have truths that are just as valuable as the teachings of Jesus.”
Segerstam was twice married and twice divorced; both his wives were musicians. He had two children from his first marriage and three from his second.
Leif Segerstam, born March 2 1944, died October 9 2024