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The Swedish conductor and music director, Arnold Östman, studied art history and musicology at Lund, Paris and Stockholm. As a musician, he concentrated on the piano and the harpsichord, being largely self-taught. During his years as a researcher, he focused on the subject of early opera, bringing to light a number of theretofore unknown or little-known Baroque operas.
Arnold Östman was a teacher at the Operahögskolan i Stockholm (then called the Statens musikdramatiska skola) in 1969. He was theatre and museum director at the Drottningholms Teatermuseum (later known as Sveriges Teatermuseum) in Stockholm starting in 1979. He was artistic director and conductor of the Vadstena-Akademien from 1971until 1981, while also serving as conductor and artistic director of the NorrlandsOperan in Umeå from 1974 until 1978.
Arnold Östman was made artistic director of the Drottningholm Palace Theatre in 1980 and remained in that role until 1992. He gained an international reputation as a champion of the period performance movement in classical music, a movement that insists on the performance of repertoire from c1600 to 1820 (i.e., Baroque, classical, and early romantic) using instruments (or modern replicas), techniques, and stylistic sensibilities from the appropriate period. In particular, Drottningholm's productions of W.A. Mozart operas with period instruments caused a considerable stir in the early days of the historical-performance movement. To Östman, use of historically appropriate instruments is vital to developing an understanding of the Mozartian style.
Outside Sweden, Arnold Östman conducted a wide range of repertoire at the opera houses of Covent Garden, Vienna, Parma, Trieste, Cologne, Bonn, Toulouse, Nice, Wexford, Madrid, Washington, Lausanne, Paris (Garnier and Bastille) and at the Schwetzingen and Vienna Festivals, among others.
As a symphonic conductor, Arnold Östman worked with many major European orchestras, including the German radio orchestras in NDR Sinfonieorchester Hamburg, HR-Sinfonieorchester - Frankfurt, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, SWR Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart and SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden & Freiburg; the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, Freiburger Barockorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de France, Academy of Ancient Music, Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharmoniker Hamburg.
Awards and recognition: Arnold Östman was awarded the newspaper Expressen's Spelmannen in 1974. He was awarded an honorary doctorate at Umeå University in 1979 and he is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was awarded the Litteris et Artibus 1990 and was elected to the Kungl. Musikaliska akademien May 14, 1992. In 2010 he was awarded the Hans Majestät Konungens medalj, "for significant contributions to Swedish music". |
