Mariss Jansons

One of the outstanding podium figures of our time, Mariss Jansons was born in 1943 in the Latvian capital of Riga, son of the noted conductor Arvīd Jansons, and grew up in the Soviet Union. He studied violin, piano and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory and subsequently worked with Hans Swarowsky in Vienna and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg. In 1971, he won the Karajan Conducting Competition in Berlin and the following year was engaged by the legendary conductor Evgeny Mravinsky as his assistant at the Leningrad Philharmonic (now St. Petersburg Philharmonic); from 1985-97 he served as the orchestra’s associate principal conductor. During those decades, he also held posts with a number of other major international orchestras: music director of the Oslo Philharmonic (1979-2000), principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic (1992-97) and music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1997-2004). From the 2003/04 season, Jansons was the chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich, and in the autumn of 2004, he also assumed the position of chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. He was a guest conductor with most of the world’s other leading orchestras, most notably with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Berliner Philharmoniker, with whom he regularly appeared in Vienna and Berlin, as well as on tour throughout Europe, the US and Japan. He was a regular guest at festivals such as Salzburg, Lucerne, Edinburgh and the BBC Proms in London. Jansons placed special emphasis on his work with young musicians. He conducted the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra on a tour of Austria and worked with the Attersee Institute Orchestra, with which he appeared at the Salzburg Festival. In Munich, he gave regular concerts with Bavarian Youth Orchestras and the Academy of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He also served as artistic director of the London-based Masterprize International Composing Competition. His extensive discography features works by Brahms, Berlioz, Bartók, Dukas, Dvořák, Grieg, Honegger, Mahler, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Respighi, Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich, Sibelius, Stravinsky, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Weill. Many of his recordings have received prestigious international prizes, and his Tchaikovsky cycle with the Oslo Philharmonic enjoys cult status. Jansons’ international distinctions include honorary membership of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and the Royal Academy of Music in London. For his devoted service to the Oslo Philharmonic, he received the Royal Norwegian Commander with Star Order of Merit, the highest award Norway confers on a foreigner. The Berliner Philharmoniker awarded him the Hans von Bülow Medal, and the Royal Philharmonic Society in London named him Conductor of the Year.