THE Swedish conductor Sixten Ehrling quickly gained a reputation when young for fastidious musicianship, both as a pianist and later as music director of the Royal Opera in Stockholm; but his reputation as a martinet led to his leaving Sweden in 1960 and pursuing his career mainly in the United States.
He was born in Malmö, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, where he studied violin and piano as well as conducting. An outstanding student, he quickly obtained a post as repetiteur at the Royal Opera and made his debut there as a conductor in 1940. From 1942 to 1944 he also worked at the opera in Gothenburg and returned to the Stockholm Royal Opera in 1944 as first conductor until 1953, when he became the company’s music director. In 1951 he worked for a time in Dresden as assistant to Karl Böhm.
Ehrling was a convinced and convincing advocate of new music. He conducted many premieres during his time at the Royal Opera, notably that of Blomdahl’s Aniara, which he brought to the Edinburgh Festival in 1959 and later to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. At the time, Aniara aroused much interest but less enthusiasm, though there could be no doubt about Ehrling’s dedication and his impressive grasp of the intricacies of the score of a far from easy piece.
In 1960 Ehrling’s intolerance and abrasive manner at rehearsal led to a rupture with the Stockholm Royal Opera and his difficulties were compounded by his adamant refusal to apologise to any of the aggrieved parties. Instead he moved to the US where he succeeded Paul Paray in 1963 as music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He remained there for ten years, during which time he gave 24 world premieres.
Ehrling made his first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1973 when his conducting of Britten’s Peter Grimes, with Jon Vickers in the title role, was described as “a triumph”. He continued to appear at the Met for the next three years, when he gave the first Met performance of Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and took charge of several complete cycles of The Ring. Though he was reasonably successful in Wagner, there was no getting away from the fact that his long suit was generally judged to be the music of the 20th century. After parting from the Met, Ehrling became principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1985, though he continued to make sporadic appearances elsewhere, especially in Sweden. He finally retired in 2004.
Advertisement
Ehrling gave much time to teaching. As early as 1954 he became director of the conductors’ course at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and from 1973 he headed the conducting department at the Juilliard School in New York. Here his musicianship and his encyclopedic knowledge of the repertory stood him in good stead and, as he mellowed, his students found his famous intolerance less fearsome than had his fellow professionals in earlier days.
Erhling made records throughout his career, mainly with Swedish orchestras and of the 20th-century Scandinavian music in which he specialised.
He is survived by his wife Gunnel Lindgren and two daughters.
Advertisement
Sixten Ehrling, conductor, was born on April 3, 1918. He died on February 13, 2005, aged 86.